Chiral symmetry breaking through spontaneous dimerization in kagomé metals

Abstract

Due to an increase in the variety of candidate compounds, kagomé metals have recently gained significant attention. Among other features, kagomé metals host Dirac cones as a key band structure feature away from half filling, and potentially yield an exceptionally large fine structure, beyond values found in other 2D Dirac materials such as graphene. We investigate the possibility of chiral symmetry breaking in kagomé metals. Based on a heuristic lattice model, we determine the critical coupling strength and the ordering pattern by means of a Schwinger-Dyson mean-field analysis. As the leading instability we identify a dimerization pattern which spontaneously opens an excitation gap at the Dirac point and breaks the chiral symmetry.