Disorder effects on triple-point fermions

Hsiu-Chuan Hsu, Ion Cosma Fulga, and Jhih-Shih You
Phys. Rev. B 106, 245118 – Published 13 December 2022

Abstract

The stability of three-dimensional relativistic semimetals to disorder has recently attracted great attention, but the effect of disorder remains elusive for multifold fermions, that are not present in the framework of quantum field theory. In this paper, we investigate one type of multifold fermions, so-called triple-point fermions (TPFs), which have pseudospin-1 degrees of freedom and topological charges ±2. Specifically, we consider the effect of disorder on a minimal, three-band tight-binding model, which realizes the minimal number of two TPFs. The numerically obtained, disorder-averaged density of states suggests that, within a finite energy window, the TPFs are robust up to a critical strength of disorder. In the strong disorder regime, the inter-TPF scattering is the main mechanism for destroying a single TPF. Moreover, we study the effects of disorder on the distribution of Fermi arcs and surface Berry curvature. We demonstrate that the Fermi arc retains its sharpness at weak disorder, but gradually dissolves into the metallic bulk for stronger disorder. In the clean limit, the surface Berry curvature exhibits a bipolar configuration in the surface Brillouin zone. With increasing disorder, the positive and negative surface Berry curvatures start to merge at the nearby momenta where the Fermi arcs penetrate into bulk.

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  • Received 14 June 2022
  • Revised 11 November 2022
  • Accepted 22 November 2022

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.106.245118

©2022 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Condensed Matter, Materials & Applied Physics

Authors & Affiliations

Hsiu-Chuan Hsu1,2,*, Ion Cosma Fulga3, and Jhih-Shih You4,†

  • 1Graduate Institute of Applied Physics, National Chengchi University, Taipei 11605, Taiwan
  • 2Department of Computer Science, National Chengchi University, Taipei 11605, Taiwan
  • 3Institute for Theoretical Solid State Physics, IFW Dresden and Würzburg-Dresden Cluster of Excellence ct.qmat, Helmholtzstrasse 20, 01069 Dresden, Germany
  • 4Department of Physics, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei 11677, Taiwan

  • *hcjhsu@nccu.edu.tw
  • jhihshihyou@ntnu.edu.tw

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Vol. 106, Iss. 24 — 15 December 2022

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