Long-range Coulomb interaction effects on the topological phase transitions between semimetals and insulators

Abstract

Topological states may be protected by a lattice symmetry in a class of topological semimetals. In three spatial dimensions, the Berry flux around gapless excitations in momentum space concretely defines a chirality, so a protecting symmetry may be referred to as a chiral symmetry. Prime examples include a Dirac semimetal (DSM) in a distorted spinel, BiZnSiO4, protected by a mirror symmetry, and a DSM in Na3Bi, protected by a rotational symmetry. In these states, topology and chiral symmetry are intrinsically tied. In this Rapid Communication, the characteristic interplay between a chiral symmetry order parameter and an instantaneous long-range Coulomb interaction is investigated with the standard renormalization group method. We show that a topological transition associated with chiral symmetry is stable under the presence of a Coulomb interaction and the electron velocity always becomes faster than the one of a chiral symmetry order parameter. Thus, the transition must not be relativistic, which implies that supersymmetry is intrinsically forbidden by the long-range Coulomb interaction. Asymptotically exact universal ratios of physical quantities such as the energy gap ratio are obtained, and connections with experiments and recent theoretical proposals are also discussed.