Axion response in Weyl semimetals

Weyl semimetal is a phase of matter that provides a solid state realization of chiral Weyl fermions. Most of its unique physics is a consequence of chiral anomaly, namely nonconservation of the number of particles of a given chirality. Mathematically, this is expressed in the appearance of the so called $\theta$ term in the action of the electromagnetic field, when the Weyl fermions are integrated out. Recently, however, it has been suggested that the analogy between the chiral fermions of quantum field theory with unbounded linear dispersion, and their solid state realization with a dispersion naturally bounded by the bandwidth and crystal momentum defined only within the first Brillouin zone, holds only in a restricted sense, with parts of the $\theta$ term absent. Here we demonstrate that this is not the case. We explicitly derive the $\theta$ term for a microscopic model of a Weyl semimetal by integrating out fermions coupled to electromagnetic field, and show that the result has exactly the same form as in the case of relativistic chiral fermions.

Figure 1

Schematic picture of the specific realization of a Weyl semimetal we consider: A multilayer heterostructure, consisting of alternating layers of topological insulator (TI) and normal insulator (NI), doped with magnetic impurities, which are assumed to order ferromagnetically. An external magnetic field $B$ is applied along the growth direction of the heterostructure.