Litcius/Paper detail

Novel Undamped Gapless Plasmon Mode in a Tilted Type-II Dirac Semimetal

Krishanu Sadhukhan, Antonio Politano, Amit Agarwal

2020Physical Review Letters53 citationsDOIOpen Access PDF

Abstract

We predict the existence of a novel long-lived gapless plasmon mode in a type-II Dirac semimetal (DSM). This gapless mode arises from the out-of-phase oscillations of the density fluctuations in the electron and the hole pockets of a type-II DSM. It originates beyond a critical wave vector along the direction of the tilt axis, owing to the momentum separation of the electron and hole pockets. A similar out-of-phase plasmon mode arises in other multicomponent charged fluids as well, but generally, it is Landau damped and lies within the particle-hole continuum. In the case of a type-II DSM, the open Fermi surface prohibits low-energy finite momentum single-particle excitations, creating a "gap" in the particle-hole continuum. The gapless plasmon mode lies within this particle-hole continuum gap and, thus, it is protected from Landau damping.

Topics & Concepts

Gapless playbackPhysicsCondensed matter physicsPlasmonSemimetalQuasiparticleLandau dampingLandau quantizationWave vectorElectronBand gapQuantum mechanicsSuperconductivityTopological Materials and PhenomenaGraphene research and applicationsQuantum and electron transport phenomena