AnWSM: Anomalous collective modes in Weyl semimetals

Project funded by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P. (FCT) (Concurso de Projetos Exploratórios em Todos os Domínios Científicos 2023), grant 2023.15319.PEX. Funded amount: EUR 49,896.60, as stated by the source. Runs 2025-01-01 to 2026-06-30. Keywords: Weyl semimetals, quantum field theory anomalies, collective axion, collective dilaton, Exact sciences. Source: OpenAIRE Graph, from the funder's project data (collected by OpenAIRE on 2025-07-21); national funding data, not CORDIS; selected because its keywords name quantum. Abstract given by the source: Recent progress in the field of topological materials results in new opportunities to study emergent phenomena resembling effects predicted in the context of the Standard Model of particle physics and cosmology. One prominent example is the axial anomaly manifested through the negative magnetoresistance in Weyl semimetals. Notably, the very same systems can give access to another effect of a similar nature but never probed experimentally before – the scale or conformal anomaly. In this project, we propose to study the material realization of the scale anomaly, the related thermoelectric transport, and novel anomalous collective excitations such as axions and dilatons. The word "anomaly", in this context, refers to a quantum violation of a classical symmetry. The axial anomaly violates the chiral symmetry, and related conservation of the axial charge, the difference between the number of right- and left-handed fermions. In many-body systems, it leads to novel transport phenomena, e.g. an electric current along the magnetic field direction, known as the negative magnetoresistance in the context of Weyl semimetals or chiral magnetic effect in high-energy physics. In turn, the scale anomaly violates the conformal invariance, resulting in a non-zero trace of the stress-energy tensor. This modification may lead to an anomalous contribution to the Nernst effect, and affects the energy-momentum transport in the system. Recently, it has been shown that the axial anomaly may result in novel axionic mode in Weyl semimetals. This fermion pairing originates in the large distance properties of the anomalous Feynman diagram and corresponding three-point correlation function. In turn, it is well known that the scale anomaly exhibits the same feature at large distances, and a similar scale anomalous mode is well-expected to exist. However, this mode, similar to a hypothetical particle, dilaton, widely discussed in the context of cosmology and astroparticle physics, has not been [shortened; the full text is on the OpenAIRE page]

Original source.

Source: OpenAIRE Graph: projects of national funders, OpenAIRE, from the project data of Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P. (FCT). Retrieved 2026-10-28. Licence: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (OpenAIRE Graph). Selected metadata, adapted presentation; the publisher's record is authoritative. No endorsement by the source is implied. Licence: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0).

AI-assisted summary: The project "AnWSM: Anomalous collective modes in Weyl semimetals" is funded by FCT with a grant of EUR 49,896.60, running from January 1, 2025, to June 30, 2026. It focuses on studying the scale anomaly and thermoelectric transport in Weyl semimetals. Suggested technology pillar: enabling. Generated by AI from the public source text; it may contain errors and the original source is authoritative.