Chiral anomaly and longitudinal magnetoconductance in pseudospin-1 fermions

Abstract

Chiral anomaly (CA), a hallmark of Weyl fermions, has emerged as a cornerstone of condensed matter physics following the discovery of Weyl semimetals. While the anomaly in pseudospin-1/2 (Weyl) systems is well-established, its extension to higher-pseudospin fermions remains a frontier with critical implications for transport phenomena in materials with multifold fermions. We present a rigorous quasiclassical analysis of CA and longitudinal magnetotransport in pseudospin-1 fermions, advancing beyond conventional models that assume constant relaxation times and neglect the orbital magnetic moment and global charge conservation. Our study uncovers a magnetic-field dependence of the longitudinal magnetoconductance: it is positive and quadratic-in-B for weak internode scattering and transitions to negative values beyond a critical internode scattering strength. Notably, the critical threshold is lower for pseudospin-1 fermions compared to their pseudospin-1/2 counterparts. We show analytically that the zero-field conductivity is affected more strongly by internode scattering for pseudospin-1 fermions than conventional Weyl fermions. These insights provide a foundational framework for interpreting recent experiments on multifold fermions and offer a roadmap for probing CA in candidate materials with space group symmetries 199, 214, and 220.