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Recent experiments performed the nonreciprocal magneotransport in ZrTe$_5$ and obtained a giant magnetochiral anisotropy (MCA) coefficient $\gamma'$. The existing theoretical analysis was based on the semiclassical Boltzmann equation. In this paper, we develop a full quantum theory to calculate $\gamma'$ and further explore the underlying physics. We reveal that the $xz$-mirror symmetry breaking term also breaks the parity symmetry of the system and leads to mixed selection rules and nonvanishing second-order conductivity $\sigma_{xxx}$. The calculations show that $\gamma'$ decreases with the magnetic field, survives only to weak impurity scatterings, and exhibits a nonmonotonous dependence on the strength of the $xz$-mirror symmetry breaking. Our paper can provide a deeper insight into the intrinsic nonreciprocal magnetotransport phenomena in the topological semimetal material., Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures

Recent experiments reported that the magnetic field can drive the Lifshitz transition and one-dimensional (1D) Weyl nodes in the quantum limit of three-dimensional pentatellurides, as they own low carrier densities and can achieve the extreme quantum limit at a low magnetic field. In this paper, we will investigate the conditions for the existence of the 1D Weyl nodes and their dc transport properties. We find that in the strong topological insulator (TI) phase of ZrTe5, the formation of the Weyl nodes depends heavily on the carrier density; while in the weak TI phase of HfTe5, the Weyl nodes are more likely to appear. These behaviors are attributed to the fact that in the strong and weak TI phases, the zeroth Landau levels exhibit opposite evolutions with the magnetic field. Moreover, the signatures of the critical fields that characterize the distinct behaviors of the system can be directly captured in the conductivities., Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures

Recent experiments have reported a lot of spectacular transport properties in topological materials, such as quantum oscillations and three-dimensional (3D) quantum Hall effect (QHE) in ZrTe$_5$. In this paper, by using a strong topological insulator model to describe ZrTe$_5$, we study the magnetotransport property of the 3D system. With fixed carrier density, we find that there exists a deferring effect in the chemical potential, which favors distinguishing the saddle points of the inverted LLs. On the other hand, with fixed chemical potential, the features of 3D QHE are demonstrated and we attribute the underlying mechanisms to the interplay between Dirac fermions, magnetic field and impurity scatterings., Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures

We use the Dirac cone model to explore the high Chern number (C) phases that are realized in the magnetic-doped topological insulator (TI) multilayer structures by Zhao et al. [Nature 588, 419 (2020)]. The Chern number is calculated by capturing the evolution of the phase boundaries with the parameters and then the Chern number phase diagrams of the TI multilayer structures are obtained. The high-C behavior is attributed to the band inversion of the renormalized Dirac cones, along with which the spin polarization at the \Gamma point will get increased. Moreover, another two TI multilayer structures as well as the TI superlattice structures are also studied., Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures

The optical selection rules of an electron system under a magnetic field play key roles in determining its optical properties, from which the band structures and underlying symmetries can be derived. In this Letter, based on a three-dimensional strong topological insulator model describing ZrTe5,we study the Landau levels (LLs) and magneto-optical conductivity under an in-plane magnetic field. We reveal that in the transverse conductivity Re(\sigma_{zz}), the unconventional optical selection rules n\righatarrow n\pm 2 dominate, with n being the LL index. We attribute the unconventional selection rules to the peculiar distribution of parity carried by the LLs, resulting from the chiral symmetry of the sub-Hamiltonians. Moreover, we predict that, if the strong anisotropic system is tuned to be nearly isotropic, the LLs would redistribute and the conventional selection rules n\rightarrow n\pm 1 can be recovered., Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures

In this paper, we give a systematic theoretical study on the Landau levels (LLs) and magneto-optical conductivity Re$(\sigma_{\alpha\alpha})$ in a gapped Dirac semimetal model with mixed linear and parabolic dispersions under a magnetic field, which was recently proposed by Jiang \textit{et al.} [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf125}, 046403 (2020)] to explain the experimental magnetoinfrared spectroscopy in the three-dimensional ZrTe$_5$ crystal. We find that the strong magnetic field can drive the LLs become noninverted and thus the strong topological insulator phase in ZrTe$_5$ turns to be a trivial insulator. In the different magnetic field regions, the density of states and Re$(\sigma_{\alpha\alpha})$ can exhibit distinct signatures. Moreover, when the magnetic field is weak, a qualitative relation in Re$(\sigma_{zz})$ between the peaks at the saddle points is revealed as Re$(\sigma_{zz}^{\zeta_n})>$Re$(\sigma_{zz}^\Gamma)$, which is in good agreement with the experiment., Comment: 8 page2, 3 figures

In this paper, we make a comprehensive study of the properties of a gapped Dirac semimetal model, which was originally proposed in the magnetoinfrared spectroscopy measurement of ZeTe$_5$, and includes both the linear and parabolic dispersions in all three directions. We find that, depending on the band inversion parameters, $\zeta'$ and $\zeta_z'$, the model can support three different phases: the single Dirac point (DP) phase, the double DPs phase and the Dirac ring phase. The three different phases can be distinguished by their low-energy features in the density of states (DOS) and optical conductivity. At high energy, both the DOS and optical conductivity exhibit power-law like behaviors, with the asymptotic exponents depending heavily on the signs of $\zeta'$ and $\zeta_z'$. Moreover, the thumb-of-rule formula between the DOS and optical conductivity is satisfied only when $(\zeta',\zeta_z')>0$. The implications of our results for experiments are discussed., Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures

The high-Chern number phases with a Chern number C>1 have been observed in a recent experiment that performed on the topological insulator (TI) multilayer structures, consisting of the alternating magnetic-doped and undoped TI layers. In this paper, we develop an effective method to determine the Chern numbers in the TI multilayer structures and then make a systematic study on the Chern number phase diagrams that are modulated by the magnetic doping and the middle layer thickness. We point out that in the multilayer structure, the high-C behavior can be attributed to the band inversion mechanisms. Moreover, we find that the lowest bands may be multifold degenerate around the Gamma point, and when they are inverted, the Chern number change will be larger than one. Besides the TI multilayer structures implemented in the experiment, we also explore the high-C phase realizations in two other kinds of the TI multilayer structures. The implications of our results for experiments are discussed., Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures

Compared with twisted bilayer graphene, twisted double bilayer graphene (TDBG) provides another important platform to realize the moir\'e flat bands. In this paper, we first calculate the valley Chern number phase diagram of TDBG in the parameter space spanned by the twist angle and the interlayer electric potential. To include the effects of interactions, we then phenomenologically introduce the spin-splitting and valley-splitting. We find that when the valley splitting is larger than the bandwidth of the first conduction band so that a gap is opened and the spin splitting is relatively weak, the orbital Chern insulator emerges at half-filling, associated with a large orbital magnetization (OM). Further calculations suggest that there is no sign reversal of the OM when the Fermi energy goes from the bottom to the top of the half-filling gap, as the OM remains negative in both AB-AB stacking and AB-BA stacking. The implications of our results for the ongoing experiments are also discussed., Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures

Understanding the low-energy excitation state in three-dimensional layered compound ZrTe5 remains a challenging problem in the study of novel topological materials. Recently, a two-dimensional conical model was proposed to explain the experimental optical spectroscopy in the 3D ZrTe5, Martino et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 122, 217402 (2019)]. Motivated by this work, in this paper, we perform a systematic theoretical study on the optical conductivity of this model in both cases without and with an external magnetic field to further demonstrate the validity of this model and to recover new physics.We find that there exist completely different characteristics for optical conductivity along different directions, due to anisotropic low-energy excitations in this two-dimensional conical model. Specifically, for the interband optical conductivity, we find asymptotic dependence on the optical frequency as Re(\sigma_x)\sim\omega^{1/2} and Re(\sigma_z)\sim{\omega}^{3/2}, which are universal both in the gapped insulator phase and Weyl semimetal phase. For the magneto-optical conductivity, on the contrary, Re(\sigma^B_{x/z}) shows distinct signatures in the gapped insulator phase and Weyl semimetal phase, which can help distinguish the two phases. Our results, to be verified in future experiments, could provide more insights into the understanding of the topological nature of ZrTe5., Comment: Phys.Rev.B 101, 195201 (2020)

Gapless Weyl semimetals (WSMs) are a novel class of topological materials that host massless Weyl fermions as their low-energy excitations. When the Weyl cone is tilted, the Lorentz invariance is broken and the Lifshitz transition drives the system from type-I WSMs into type-II WSMs. Here, based on the lattice model, we perform a systematic numerical study of the effect of on-site disorder on the diagonal magnetoconductivity in tilted WSMs.We use the self-consistent Born approximation to calculate the disorder-induced self-energy and then apply the Kubo-Streda formula to calculate the diagonal magnetoconductivity. For the transverse magnetoconductivity \sigma_xx, the disorder is found to exhibit distinct effects in the quantum limit regime and in the quantum oscillation regime of type-I WSMs, which could be understood from Einstein's relationship.With strong disorder, \sigma_xx shows a linear relation with the inverse magnetic field 1/B , which exhibits certain robustness to both the Fermi energy and the Weyl cone tilting. For the longitudinal magnetoconductivity \sigma_zz , the strong disorder can break the positive magnetoconductivity as well as the Shubnikov-de Haas oscillations.By analyzing the spectral function, we find that the chiral anomaly is still preserved at strong disorder even when the Weyl cone is overtilted, as there is no gap opening around the Weyl nodes. The implications of our results for experiments are discussed., Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures

We investigate the effect of disorder on the Landau levels (LLs) in tilted three dimensional Weyl semimetals (WSMs) when a magnetic field is present. Based on the minimum lattice model and by using the exact diagonalization and Kubo's formula, we numerically calculate the Hall conductivity and the density of states (DOS), from which several striking signatures are found to distinguish type-I WSMs from type-II WSMs: the first is the response of the Hall conductivity to the Fermi energy around the band center in clean limit, the second is the performance of the Hall conductivity to disorder, where in type-I WSMs, the robustness of the low-energy LLs is broken successively from the higher LLs to the lower ones and can be understood with the sink down picture, and the third is the behavior of the DOS at zero energy to disorder. The implications of our results are discussed., Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures

We investigate the topological phase transitions in graphene under the modulation of circularly polarized light, by analyzing the changes of edge states and its topological structures. A full phase diagram, with up to ten different topological phases, is presented in the parameter space spanned by the driving frequency and light strength. We find that the high-Chern number behavior is very common in the driven system. While the one-photon resonance can create the chiral edge states in the $\pi-$gap, the two-photon resonance will induce the counter-propagating edge modes in the zero-energy gap. When the driving light strength is strong, the number and even the chirality of the edge states may change in the $\pi-$gap. The robustness of the edge states to disorder potential are also examined. We close by discussing the feasibility of experimental proposals., Comment: 6pages, 3 figures