Optical evidence of the chiral magnetic anomaly in the Weyl semimetal TaAs

Published

March 4, 2020

Author(s)

Antonio L. Levy, Andrei Sushkov, Fengguang Liu, Bing Shen, Ni Ni, Howard D. Drew, Gregory Jenkins

Abstract

Chiral pumping from optical electric fields oscillating at THz frequencies is observed in the Weyl material TaAs with electric and magnetic fields aligned along both the a- and c-axes. Free carrier spectral weight enhancement is measured directly for the first time, confirming theoretical expectations of chiral pumping. A departure from linear field-dependence of the Drude weight is observed at the highest fields in the quantum limit, providing evidence of field-dependent Fermi velocity of the chiral Landau level. Implications for the chiral magnetic effect in Weyl semimetals from the optical f-sum rule are discussed.

Citation

Physical Review B

Volume

101

Issue

12

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.101.125102

Local Download

Keywords

"Weyl", "THz", "Optical", "Topological", "Magnetic", "Landau level", "FTIR"

Citation

Levy, A. , Sushkov, A. , Liu, F. , Shen, B. , Ni, N. , Drew, H. and Jenkins, G. (2020), Optical evidence of the chiral magnetic anomaly in the Weyl semimetal TaAs, Physical Review B, [online], https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.101.125102 (Accessed October 17, 2025)