Tilted Dirac Fermions Research Articles

Kinetic theory of tilted Dirac cone materials

We formulate the Boltzmann kinetic equations for interacting electrons with tilted Dirac cones in two space dimensions characterized by a tilt parameter 0≤ζ<1. By solving the linearized Boltzmann equation, we find that the broadening of the Drude pole is enhanced by κ(ζ)×(1−ζ2)−1/2, where the κ is interaction-induced enhancement factor. The intensity of the Drude pole is also anisotropically enhanced by (1−ζ2)−1. The ubiquitous “redshift” factors (1−ζ2)1/2 can be regarded as a manifestation of an underlying spacetime structure in such solids. The additional broadening κ that arises from the interactions cannot be obtained from a simple coordinate change and are more pronounced for electrons in a ζ-deformed Minkowski spacetime of tilted Dirac fermions.

Asymmetric Tilt-Induced Quantum Beating of Conductance Oscillation in Magnetically Modulated Dirac Matter Systems.

Herein, we investigate the effect of tilt mismatch on the quantum oscillations of spin transport properties in two-dimensional asymmetrically tilted Dirac cone systems. This study involves the examination of conductance oscillation in two distinct junction types: transverse- and longitudinal-tilted Dirac cones (TTDCs and LTDCs). Our findings reveal an unusual quantum oscillation of spin-polarized conductance within the TTDC system, characterized by two distinct anomaly patterns within a single period, labeled as the linear conductance phase and the oscillatory conductance phase. Interestingly, these phases emerge in association with tilt-induced orbital pseudo-magnetization and exchange interaction. Our study also demonstrates that the structure of the LTDC can modify the frequency of spin conductance oscillation, and the asymmetric effect within this structure results in a quantum beating pattern in oscillatory spin conductance. We note that an enhancement in the asymmetric longitudinal tilt velocity ratio within the structure correspondingly amplifies the beating frequency. Our research potentially contributes valuable insights for detecting the asymmetry of tilted Dirac fermions in type-I Dirac semimetal-based spintronics and quantum devices.

Tunneling Valley Hall Effect Driven by Tilted Dirac Fermions.

Valleytronics is a research field utilizing a valley degree of freedom of electrons for information processing and storage. A strong valley polarization is critical for realistic valleytronic applications. Here, we predict a tunneling valley Hall effect (TVHE) driven by tilted Dirac fermions in all-in-one tunnel junctions based on a two-dimensional (2D) valley material. Different doping of the electrode and spacer regions in these tunnel junctions results in momentum filtering of the tunneling Dirac fermions, generating a strong transverse valley Hall current dependent on the Dirac-cone tilting. Using the parameters of an existing 2D valley material, we demonstrate that such a strong TVHE can host a giant valley Hall angle even in the absence of the Berry curvature. Finally, we predict that resonant tunneling can occur in a tunnel junction with properly engineered device parameters such as the spacer width and transport direction, providing significant enhancement of the valley Hall angle. Our work opens a new approach to generate valley polarization in realistic valleytronic systems.

Fluctuations in Planar Magnetotransport Due to Tilted Dirac Cones in Topological Materials.

Fluctuations in planar magnetotransport are ubiquitous in topological HgTe structures, in both tensile (topological insulator) and compressively strained layers (Weyl semimetal phase). We show that the common reason for the fluctuations is the presence of tilted Dirac cones combined with the formation of charge puddles. The origin of the tilted Dirac cones is the mix of the Zeeman term due to the in-plane magnetic field and quadratic contributions to the dispersion relation. We develop a network model that mimics the transport of tilted Dirac fermions in the landscape of charge puddles. The model captures the essential features of the experimental data. It should be relevant for the interpretation of planar magnetotransport in a variety of topological and small band gap materials.

Singular low-energy states of tilted Dirac semimetals induced by the fermion-fermion interactions

We attentively investigate the effects of short-range fermion-fermion interactions on the low-energy properties of both two-dimensional type-I and type-II tilted Dirac semimetals by means of the renormalization group framework. Practicing the standard renormalization group procedures via taking into account all one-loop corrections gives rise to the coupled energy-dependent evolutions of all interaction parameters, which are adopted to carefully examine whether and how the fermion-fermion interactions influence the low-energy physical behaviors of tilted Dirac fermions. After carrying out the detailed analysis of coupled flows, we figure out the tilting parameter dictates the low-energy states of tilted Dirac fermions in conjunction with starting values of fermion-fermion couplings. With proper variations of these two kinds of parameters, the tilted Dirac fermions can either flow towards the Gaussian fixed point or undergo certain instability that is conventionally accompanied by a phase transition in the low-energy regime. In addition, all potential instabilities can be clustered into five distinct classes owing to the competitions between the tilting parameter and initial fermionic interactions. Moreover, the dominant phases accompanied by the instabilities are determined via computing and comparing the susceptibilities of eight potential phases.

Symmetry and quantum kinetics of the nonlinear Hall effect

We argue that the static non-linear Hall conductivity can always be represented as a vector in two-dimensions and as a pseudo-tensor in three-dimensions independent of its microscopic origin. In a single band model with a constant relaxation rate this vector or tensor is proportional to the Berry curvature dipole \cite{Sodemann_2015}. Here, we develop a quantum Boltzmann formalism to second order in electric fields. We find that in addition to the Berry Curvature Dipole term, there exist additional disorder mediated corrections to the non-linear Hall tensor that have the same scaling in impurity scattering rate. These can be thought of as the non-linear counterparts to the side-jump and skew-scattering corrections to the Hall conductivity in the linear regime. We illustrate our formalism by computing the different contributions to the non-linear Hall conductivity of two-dimensional tilted Dirac fermions.

Interplay between tilt, disorder, and Coulomb interaction in type-I Dirac fermions

We investigate the mutual influence of tilt, disorder, and Coulomb interaction in a type-I Dirac semimetal (DSM) with $x$-direction tilt by performing a renormalization group analysis. The interplay between disorder and ordinary tilt generates an effective tilt along the $x$-direction, which is the physically observable one. There exist two types of disorder which increase the effective tilt and drive a phase transition from the DSM phase to the diffusive metal phase. The diffusive phase transition stops the increase of the effective tilt and the surface of the original Dirac cone in the diffusive metal phase is just slightly tilted. Surprisingly, the Dirac point is replaced by a bulk nodal arc in the diffusive metal phase. The Coulomb interaction suppresses the diffusive phase transition and therefore is harmful to the formation of bulk nodal arc. In contrast, there also exists other two types of disorder which reduce the effective tilt and induce no phase transition. For these two types of disorder, the Coulomb interaction enhances their low-energy relevances. Coexistence of Coulomb interaction with any of them leads to a stable infrared fixed point where the coupling strengths for two kinds of interaction are identical and the effective tilt vanishes. The original tilted Dirac semimetal now reacts like an untilted and interaction-free Dirac semimetal. Our results show that interplay between tilt, disorder, and Coulomb interaction results in rich low-energy properties for the tilted Dirac fermions.

Phase diagram of a two-dimensional dirty tilted Dirac semimetal

We investigate the effects of quenched disorder on a non-interacting tilted Dirac semimetal in two dimensions. Depending on the magnitude of the tilting parameter, the system can have either Fermi points (type-I) or Fermi lines (type-II). In general, there are three different types of disorders for Dirac fermions in two dimensions, namely, the random scalar potential, the random vector potentials along and perpendicular to the tilting direction, and the random mass. We study the effects of weak disorder in terms of the renormalization group, which is performed by integrating out the modes with large energies, instead of large momenta. Since the parametrization of the low-energy degrees of freedom depends on the structure of the Fermi surface, the resulting one-loop renormalization-group equations depend on the type of tilted Dirac fermions. Whenever the disorder is a marginal perturbation, we examine its role on low-energy physics by a mean-field approximation of the replica field theory or the first-order Born approximation. Based on our analysis, we suggest the phase diagrams of a two-dimensional tilted Dirac fermion in the presence of different types of disorder.

Topologically Protected Doubling of Tilted Dirac Fermions in Two Dimensions

Topologically Protected Doubling of Tilted Dirac Fermions in Two Dimensions

Topologically Protected Doubling of Tilted Dirac Fermions in Two Dimensions

The doubling of massless Dirac fermions on two‐dimensional lattices is theoretically studied. It has been shown that the doubling of massless Dirac fermions on a lattice with broken chiral symmetry is topologically protected even when the Dirac cone is tilted. This is due to the generalized chiral symmetry defined for lattice systems, where such models can be generated by a deformation of the chiral‐symmetric lattice models. The present paper shows for two‐band lattice models that this is a general way to produce systems with the generalized chiral symmetry in that such systems can always be transformed back to a lattice model with the conventional chiral symmetry. Specifically it is shown that the number of zero modes is an invariant of the transformation, leading to the topological protection à la Nielsen‐Ninomiya of the doubling of tilted and massless Dirac fermions in two dimensions.

Condition for the emergence of a bulk Fermi arc in disordered Dirac-fermion systems

We present a renormalization group analysis of the disorder effects on the low-energy behaviors of two-dimensional tilted Dirac-fermion systems, in which the fermions have two distinct orbitals unrelated by any symmetry. Four types of disordered potential, two interorbital and two intraorbital, are considered. If there is only one type of interorbital disorder, the fermion-disorder scattering induces logarithmic or power-law corrections to the fermion density of states and specific heat. In contrast, the intraorbital disorder can turn the system into a strongly disordered phase. In this disordered phase, calculations based on self-consistent Born approximation reveal that the Dirac point is destroyed and replaced by a bulk Fermi arc. We also study the interplay of four types of disorder, and find that the Dirac point can either remain intact or give place to a Fermi arc. We obtain the condition for the emergence of a Fermi arc in this case. Our results indicate that disorders can result in rich low-energy properties of tilted Dirac fermions.

Renormalization of Coulomb interactions in a system of two-dimensional tilted Dirac fermions

We investigate the effects of long-ranged Coulomb interactions in a tilted Dirac semimetal in two dimensions by using the perturbative renormalization-group method. Depending on the magnitude of the tilting parameter, the undoped system can have either Fermi points (type-I) or Fermi lines (type-II). Previous studies usually performed the renormalization-group transformations by integrating out the modes with large momenta. This is problematic when the Fermi surface is open, like type-II Dirac fermions. In this work, we study the effects of Coulomb interactions, following the spirit of Shankar\cite{Shankar}, by introducing a cutoff in the energy scale around the Fermi surface and integrating out the high-energy modes. For type-I Dirac fermions, our result is consistent with that of the previous work. On the other hand, we find that for type-II Dirac fermions, the magnitude of the tilting parameter increases monotonically with lowering energies. This implies the stability of type-II Dirac fermions in the presence of Coulomb interactions, in contrast with previous results. Furthermore, for type-II Dirac fermions, the velocities in different directions acquire different renormalization even if they have the same bare values. By taking into account the renormalization of the tilting parameter and the velocities due to the Coulomb interactions, we show that while the presence of a charged impurity leads only to charge redistribution around the impurity for type-I Dirac fermions, for type-II Dirac fermions, the impurity charge is completely screened, albeit with a very long screening length. The latter indicates that the temperature dependence of physical observables are essentially determined by the RG equations we derived. We illustrate this by calculating the temperature dependence of the compressibility and specific heat of the interacting tilted Dirac fermions.

Lattice realization of the generalized chiral symmetry in two dimensions

While it has been pointed out that the chiral symmetry, which is important for the Dirac fermions in graphene, can be generalized to tilted Dirac fermions as in organic metals, such a generalized symmetry was so far defined only for a continuous low-energy Hamiltonian. Here we show that the generalized chiral symmetry can be rigorously defined for lattice fermions as well. A key concept is a continuous "algebraic deformation" of Hamiltonians, which generates lattice models with the generalized chiral symmetry from those with the conventional chiral symmetry. This enables us to explicitly express zero modes of the deformed Hamiltonian in terms of that of the original Hamiltonian. Another virtue is that the deformation can be extended to non-uniform systems, such as fermion-vortex systems and disordered systems. Application to fermion vortices in a deformed system shows how the zero modes for the conventional Dirac fermions with vortices can be extended to the tilted case.

Survival of sharpn=0Landau levels in massive tilted Dirac fermions: Role of the generalized chiral operator

Anomalously sharp (delta-function-like) $n=0$ Landau level in the presence of disorder is usually considered to be a manifestation of the massless Dirac fermions in magnetic fields. This property persists even when the Dirac cone is tilted, which has been shown by Kawarabayashi et al. [Phys. Rev. B {\bf 83}, 153414 (2011)] to be a consequence of a "generalized chiral symmetry". Here we pose a question whether this property will be washed out when the tilted Dirac fermion becomes massive. Surprisingly, the levels persist to be delta-function-like, although the mass term that splits $n=0$ Landau levels may seem to degrade the anomalous sharpness. This has been shown both numerically for a tight-binding model, and analytically in terms of the Aharonov-Casher argument extended to the massive tilted Dirac fermions. A key observation is that, while the generalized chiral symmetry is broken by the mass term, the $n=0$ Landau level remains to accommodate eigenstates of the generalized chiral operator, resulting in the robustness against chiral-symmetric disorders. Mathematically, the conventional and generalized chiral operators are related with each other via a non-unitary transformation, with which the split, nonzero-energy $n=0$ wave functions of the massive system are just gauge-transformed zero-mode wave functions of the massless system. A message is that the chiral symmetry, rather than a simpler notion of the sublattice symmetry, is essential for the robustness of the $n=0$ Landau level.