Comprehensive scan for nonmagnetic Weyl semimetals with nonlinear optical response

  • Qiunan Xu
  • , Yang Zhang
  • , Klaus Koepernik
  • , Wujun Shi
  • , Jeroen van den Brink
  • , Claudia Felser
  • , Yan Sun

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

32 Scopus citations

Abstract

First-principles calculations have recently been used to develop comprehensive databases of nonmagnetic topological materials that are protected by time-reversal or crystalline symmetry. However, owing to the low symmetry requirement of Weyl points, a symmetry-based approach to identifying topological states cannot be applied to Weyl semimetals (WSMs). To date, WSMs with Weyl points in arbitrary positions are absent from the well-known databases. In this work, we develop an efficient algorithm to search for Weyl points automatically and establish a database of nonmagnetic WSMs with Weyl points near the Fermi level based on the experimental non-centrosymmetric crystal structures in the Inorganic Crystal Structure Database (ICSD). In total, 46 Weyl semimetals were discovered to have nearly clean Fermi surfaces and Weyl points within 300 meV of the Fermi level. Nine of them are chiral structures which may exhibit the quantized circular photogalvanic effect. In addition, the nonlinear optical response is studied and the giant shift current is explored. Besides nonmagnetic WSMs, our powerful tools can also be used in the discovery of magnetic topological materials.

Original languageEnglish
Article number32
Journalnpj Computational Materials
Volume6
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 1 2020

Funding

This work was financially supported by the ERC Advanced Grant No. 291472 ‘Idea Heusler’, ERC Advanced Grant No. 742068 ‘TOPMAT’. We also acknowledge funding by the DFG through SFB 1143 (project ID 247310070) and the Wu€rzburg-Dresden Cluster of Excellence on Complexity and Topology in Quantum Matter – ct.qmat (EXC 2147, project ID 39085490). Some of our calculations are carried on Cobra cluster of MPCDF, Max Planck society.

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