Adiabatic dechiralization and thermodynamics of Weyl semimetals

Abstract

We study thermodynamic manifestations of the chiral anomaly in disordered Weyl semimetals. We focus, in particular, on the effect which we call “adiabatic dechiralization,” the phenomenon in which a change in temperature and/or an absorption or release of heat results from applying parallel electric and magnetic fields that change the imbalance of quasiparticles with different chiralities (at different Weyl nodes). This effect is similar to that of adiabatic demagnetization, which is commonly used as a method of low-temperature refrigeration. We describe this phenomenon quantitatively and discuss experimental conditions favorable for its observation. A related phenomenon, which we analyze and which is readily observable in experiments, is the dependency of the heat capacity of a Weyl semimetal on parallel electric and magnetic fields.