Chiral magnetic effect without chirality source in asymmetric Weyl semimetals

Understand

We describe a new type of the Chiral Magnetic Effect (CME) that should occur in Weyl semimetals with an asymmetry in the dispersion relations of the left- and right-handed chiral Weyl fermions.

• In such materials, time-dependent pumping of electrons from a non-chiral external source generates a non-vanishing chiral chemical potential.
• This is due to the different capacities of the left- and right-handed (LH and RH) chiral Weyl cones arising from the difference in the density of states in the LH and RH cones.
• The chiral chemical potential then generates, via the chiral anomaly, a current along the direction of an applied magnetic field even in the absence of an external electric field.