It has long been known that the properties of materials are crucially dependent on the arrangement of the atoms that make up the material. For example, atoms that are further apart will tend to vibrate more slowly and propagate sound waves more slowly. Now, researchers from Brookhaven National Laboratory have used Sector 30 at the Advanced Photon Source (APS) to discover “topological” vibrations in iron silicide (FeSi). These topological vibration arise from a special symmetrical arrangement of the atoms in FeSi and endow the atomic vibrations with novel properties such as the potential to transmit sound waves along the edge of the materials without scattering and dissipation. Looking to the future one might envisage using these modes to transfer energy or information within technological devices.
In quantum mechanics, atomic motions in crystals are described in terms of vibrational modes called phonons. Similar to electrons moving in metals, phonons can also propagate through materials. The detailed properties of these excitations determine many of the thermal, mechanical and electronic properties of the material. In 2017, part of the current collaborative team from the Chinese Academy of Science, theoretically predicted the existence of the topological phonons in transition metal monosilicides. As shown in Fig.1, these topological phonons are formed by two Dirac-cones with different slopes and are protected by symmetry. Since the mathematical description of each Dirac-cone is intimately related to the famous Weyl-equation that was originally proposed in high-energy physics, these topological phonons are consequently called double-Weyl excitations.
Image: (extract) Schematic view of the double-Weyl phonon dispersion. Full image here.