Disorder effect on chiral edge modes and anomalous Hall conductance in Weyl semimetals

Yositake Takane

Published 2016-09-26Version 1

Typical Weyl semimetals host chiral surface states and hence show an anomalous Hall response. Although a Weyl semimetal phase is known to be robust against weak disorder, the influence of disorder on chiral states is not fully clarified so far. We study the behavior of such chiral states in the presence of disorder and its consequences on an anomalous Hall response, focusing on a thin slab of Weyl semimetal with chiral surface states along its edge. It is shown that weak disorder does not disrupt chiral edge states but crucially affects them owing to the renormalization of a mass parameter: the number of chiral edge states changes depending on the strength of disorder. It is also shown that the Hall conductance is quantized when the Fermi level is located near Weyl nodes within a finite-size gap. This quantization of the Hall conductance collapses once the strength of disorder exceeds a critical value, suggesting that it serves as a probe to distinguish a Weyl semimetal phase from a diffusive anomalous Hall metal phase.