Type-II Weyl cone transitions in driven semimetals

Abstract

Periodically driven systems provide tunable platforms to realize interesting Floquet topological phases and phase transitions. In electronic systems with Weyl dispersions, the band crossings are topologically protected even in the presence of time-periodic perturbations. This robustness permits various routes to shift and tilt the Weyl spectra in the momentum and energy space using circularly polarized light of sufficient intensity. We show that type-II Weyl fermions, in which the Weyl dispersions are tilted with the appearance of pocketlike Fermi surfaces, can be induced in driven Dirac semimetals and line node semimetals. Under a circularly polarized drive, both semimetal systems immediately generate Weyl node pairs whose types can be further controlled by the driving amplitude and direction. The resultant phase diagrams demonstrate experimental feasibilities.