Weyl fermions from crystal symmetry
DIPC Seminars
- Speaker
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Juan Luis Mañes
- When
-
2017/02/17
13:00 - Place
- Donostia International Physics Center
- Add to calendar
-
iCal
We consider the existence of
massles Dirac (Weyl) fermions around points of symmetry in the Brillouin zone
of 3D crystals with negligible spin-orbit interaction. We use group theory to
show that this is possible, but only for a reduced number of space groups and
points of symmetry. Moreover, we show that for a handful of space groups the
existence of Weyl fermions is not only possible but unavoidable,
irrespective of the concrete crystal structure. Thus our results can be used to
look for Weyl fermions in a specific class of systems, namely that of
nonmagnetic 3D crystals with sufficiently weak spin-orbit coupling. A
simple tight-binding model is used to illustrate some of the issues.