English

On thermal Nieh-Yan anomaly in topological Weyl materials

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2020-03-17 v1 Superconductivity High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

We discuss the possibility of a gravitional Nieh-Yan anomaly of the type μj5μ=γT2TaTa\partial_\mu j^\mu_5 =\gamma T^2{\cal T}^a\wedge {\cal T}_a in topological Weyl materials, where TT is temperature and Ta{\cal T}^a is the effective or emergent torsion. As distinct from the non-universal parameter Λ\Lambda in the conventional (zero temperature) Nieh-Yan anomaly -- with canonical dimensions of momentum -- the parameter γ\gamma is dimensionless. This suggests that the dimensionless parameter is fundamental, being determined by the geometry, topology and number of the number of chiral quantum fields without any explicit non-universal UV scales. This conforms with previous results in the literature, as well as spectral flow calculations using torsional magnetic field at finite temperature.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1911.03382,
  title  = {On thermal Nieh-Yan anomaly in topological Weyl materials},
  author = {J. Nissinen and G. E. Volovik},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1911.03382},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

4 pages, submitted to JETP Lett. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1909.08936