Current at a distance and resonant transparency in weyl semimetals

Abstract

Surface Fermi arcs are the most prominent manifestation of the topological nature of Weyl semimetals. In the presence of a static magnetic field oriented perpendicular to the sample surface, their existence leads to unique intersurface cyclotron orbits. We propose two experiments that directly probe the Fermi arcs: a magnetic-field-dependent nonlocal dc voltage and sharp resonances in the transmission of electromagnetic waves at frequencies controlled by the field. We show that these experiments do not rely on quantum mechanical phase coherence, which renders them far more robust and experimentally accessible than quantum effects. We also comment on the applicability of these ideas to Dirac semimetals.