Anomalous transport model with axial magnetic fields

The transport properties of massless fermions in spacetime dimension have been in the focus of recent theoretical and experimental research. New transport properties appear as consequences of chiral anomalies. The most prominent is the generation of a current in a magnetic field, the so-called chiral magnetic effect leading to an enhancement of the electric conductivity (negative magnetoresistivity). We study the analogous effect for axial magnetic fields that couple with opposite signs to fermions of different chirality. We emphasize local charge conservation and study the induced magneto-conductivities proportional to an electric field and a gradient in temperature. We find that the magnetoconductivity is enhanced whereas the magneto-thermoelectric conductivity is diminished. As a side result we interpret an anomalous contribution to the entropy current as a generalized thermal Hall effectThe research of K.L. has been supported by FPA2015-65480-P and by the Centro de Excelencia Severo Ochoa Programme under grant SEV-2012-0249 and SEV-2016-0597. The research of Y.L. has been supported by the Thousand Young Talents Program of China and grants ZG216S17A5 and KG12003301 from Beihang Universit

Electromagnetic and thermal responses in topological matter: topological terms, quantum anomalies and D-branes

We discuss the thermal (or gravitational) responses in topological superconductors and in topological phases in general. Such thermal responses (as well as electromagnetic responses for conserved charge) provide a definition of topological insulators and superconductors beyond the single-particle picture. In two-dimensional topological phases, the Str\v{e}da formula for the electric Hall conductivity is generalized to the thermal Hall conductivity. Applying this formula to the Majorana surface states of three-dimensional topological superconductors predicts cross-correlated responses between the angular momentum and thermal polarization (entropy polarization). We also discuss a use of D-branes in string theory as a systematic tool to derive all such topological terms and topological responses. In particular, we relate the $\mathbb{Z}_2$ index of topological insulators introduced by Kane and Mele (and its generalization to other symmetry classes and to arbitrary dimensions) to the K-theory charge of non-BPS D-branes, and vice versa. We thus establish a link between the stability of non-BPS D-branes and the topological stability of topological insulators.Comment: 16 pages, 2 figures; Submitted to a topical issue of the Comptes Rendus de l Academie des Sciences (CRAS

Thermal Transport Dynamics in Active Heat Transfer Fluids (AHTF)

We present results of molecular dynamics (MD) calculations of the effective thermal conductivity of nanofluids containing self-propelled nanoparticles. The translational and rotational dynamics observed in the simulations follow the behavior expected from the standard theoretical analysis of Brownian and self-propelled nanoparticles. The superposition of self-propulsion and rotational Brownian motion causes the behavior of the self-propelled nanoparticles to resemble Brownian diffusion with an effective coefficient that is larger than the standard Brownian value by a factor of several thousand. As a result of the enhanced diffusion (and the convective mixing resulting from the motion), we observe a discriminable increase of the effective thermal conductivity of the solution. While the increases we observe are in the range of several percent, they are significant considering that, without propulsion, the nanofluid thermal conductivity is essentially not affected by the Brownian motion and can be understood within the effective medium theory of thermal conduction. Our results constitute a proof of concept that self-propelled particles have the potential to enhance thermal conductivity of the liquid in which they are immersed, an idea that could ultimately be implemented in a broad variety of cooling applications

Anisotropic electrical and thermal magnetotransport in the magnetic semimetal GdPtBi

The half-Heusler rare-earth intermetallic GdPtBi has recently gained attention due to peculiar magnetotransport phenomena that have been associated with the possible existence of Weyl fermions, thought to arise from the crossings of spin-split conduction and valence bands. On the other hand, similar magnetotransport phenomena observed in other rare-earth intermetallics have often been attributed to the interaction of itinerant carriers with localized magnetic moments stemming from the $4f$-shell of the rare-earth element. In order to address the origin of the magnetotransport phenomena in GdPtBi, we performed a comprehensive study of the magnetization, electrical and thermal magnetoresistivity on two single-crystalline GdPtBi samples. In addition, we performed an analysis of the Fermi surface via Shubnikov-de Haas oscillations in one of the samples and compared the results to \emph{ab initio} band structure calculations. Our findings indicate that the electrical and thermal magnetotransport in GdPtBi cannot be solely explained by Weyl physics and is strongly influenced by the interaction of both itinerant charge carriers and phonons with localized magnetic Gd-ions and possibly also paramagnetic impurities.Comment: 11 figure