Topological Singularity Induced Chiral Kohn Anomaly in a Weyl Semimetal
Name
PhysRevLett.124.236401.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
2.93 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
08853eadb023a96dc0c5b368a9ee751b
Author(s)
Nguyen, Thanh
Han, Fei
Andrejevic, Nina
Pablo-Pedro, Ricardo
Apte, Anuj
Tsurimaki, Yoichiro
Ding, Zhiwei
Zhang, Kunyan
Alatas, Ahmet
Alp, Ercan E
Date Issued
2020
Journal
Physical Review Letters
Publisher
American Physical Society (APS)
Version
Final published version
Abstract
© 2020 American Physical Society. The electron-phonon interaction (EPI) is instrumental in a wide variety of phenomena in solid-state physics, such as electrical resistivity in metals, carrier mobility, optical transition, and polaron effects in semiconductors, lifetime of hot carriers, transition temperature in BCS superconductors, and even spin relaxation in diamond nitrogen-vacancy centers for quantum information processing. However, due to the weak EPI strength, most phenomena have focused on electronic properties rather than on phonon properties. One prominent exception is the Kohn anomaly, where phonon softening can emerge when the phonon wave vector nests the Fermi surface of metals. Here we report a new class of Kohn anomaly in a topological Weyl semimetal (WSM), predicted by field-theoretical calculations, and experimentally observed through inelastic X-ray and neutron scattering on WSM tantalum phosphide. Compared to the conventional Kohn anomaly, the Fermi surface in a WSM exhibits multiple topological singularities of Weyl nodes, leading to a distinct nesting condition with chiral selection, a power-law divergence, and non-negligible dynamical effects. Our work brings the concept of the Kohn anomaly into WSMs and sheds light on elucidating the EPI mechanism in emergent topological materials.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Materials Science and Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1103/PHYSREVLETT.124.236401
