Signatures of topology in generic transport measurements for Rarita–Schwinger–Weyl semimetals

Abstract

We investigate how the signatures of the topological properties of the bandstructures for nodal-point semimetals are embedded in the response coefficients, arising in two distinct experimental set-ups, by taking the Rarita–Schwinger–Weyl (RSW) semimetal as an example. The first scenario involves the computation of third-rank tensors representing second-order response coefficients, relating the charge/thermal current densities to the combined effects of the gradient of the chemical potential and an external electric field/temperature gradient. On the premises that internode scatterings can be ignored, the relaxation-time approximation leads to a quantized value for the nonvanishing components of each of these nonlinear response tensors, characterizing a single untilted RSW node. Furthermore, the final expressions turn out to be insensitive to the specific values of the chemical potential and the temperature. The second scenario involves computing the magnetoelectric conductivity under the action of collinear electric ($E$) and magnetic ($B$) fields, representing a planar Hall set-up. In particular, our focus is in bringing out the dependence of the linear-in-$\left|B\right|$ parts of the conductivity tensor on the intrinsic topological properties of the bandstructure, which are nonvanishing only in the presence of a nonzero tilt in the energy spectrum.