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  • Letter
  • Open Access

No bulk thermal currents in massive Dirac fermions

Feng Liu*, A. Daria Dumitriu-I.†, and Alessandro Principi‡

  • *Contact author: feng.liu-6@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk
  • †Contact author: alexandra-daria.dumitriu-iovanescu@outlook. com
  • ‡Contact author: alessandro.principi@manchester.ac.uk
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Phys. Rev. B 110, L081404 – Published 9 August, 2024

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.110.L081404

Abstract

We calculate the energy current flowing in the bulk of a (2+1)-dimensional system of massive Dirac fermions and along a (1+1)-dimensional domain wall generated by flipping the sign of the particle mass. We show that, at low temperatures and in the long-wavelength limit, the system does not support a bulk thermal Hall current proportional to the temperature gradient. The only such contribution is due to states localized at the domain wall. This puts an end to a controversy existing in the literature and amends previous results obtained via first-order perturbation calculations.

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References (48)

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Phys. Rev. B 110, L081404– Published 9 August, 2024
  • Received 7 May 2024
  • Revised 15 July 2024
  • Accepted 29 July 2024
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