Quantum structure of the chiral vortical effect and boundary-induced vortical pumping
Abstract
The chiral vortical effect (CVE) -- an axial current driven by rotation in chiral matter -- appears in systems ranging from relativistic fluids to Weyl semimetals, yet its quantum origin remains unclear because existing derivations are semiclassical. We present an exact quantum solution of a rotating Weyl fermion in a finite cylinder. We show that the bulk vortical response is entirely a magnetization current while the current density on the rotation axis remains finite and matches semiclassical predictions. For spin-polarized boundary conditions, we uncover an additional effect beyond the known CVE: a robust family of chiral modes that transport axial charge, , under rotation by angle , where is the Weyl node chirality and is the number of chiral modes. The pump is independent of temperature, Fermi level and Weyl velocities, but depends on the UV-sensitive number . These results establish a fully quantum picture of the CVE and reveal a boundary-enforced chiral spectral structure underlying vortical response in Weyl systems.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2604.01293,
title = {Quantum structure of the chiral vortical effect and boundary-induced vortical pumping},
author = {B. Q. Song and Pavan Hosur},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.01293},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
15 pages, 3 figures