Unexpected nontriviality of inter-band contribution and huge anisotropy of conductivity in tilted Weyl semimetals

Abstract

For tilted type-I Weyl semimetals, our theoretical study indicates that the Kubo conductivity parallel to cone tilt direction increases rapidly with the Fermi energy. Hence it deviates from its Boltzmann counterpart sizably even though the electronic wavelength is so short that the quantum interference is seemingly trivial. As a result, such a system shows huge anisotropy of the conductivity. By means of the diagrammatic expansion technique, we find that the absence of backscattering and the breakdown of the time reversal symmetry in tilted Weyl semimetals are two crucial factors which bring about the nontrivial inter-band contribution to the Kubo conductivity. Our findings indicate that Boltzmann theory fails to describe reasonably the electronic transport of a tilted Weyl cone, even in the case of weak scattering and short Fermi wavelength. Though in this regime such a semiclassical transport theory is believed to be valid according to conventional arguments. This situation should be paid attention. • Via SCBA, the high order quantum corrections to conductivity are considered and it makes huge enhancement to diagonal conductivity σ z z , which is missed by the Boltzmann transport equation with the lowest order Born approximation. • The huge anisotropy of diagonal conductivity in tilted WSMs origin from the nature of the absence of backscattering and breakdown of TRS. • The interaction range of impurity potential affects the extent of anisotropy.