• Accepted Paper

Chiral vortical effect and boundary-induced vortical pumping in finite Weyl systems

Boqun Song and Pavan Hosur

Phys. Rev. B - Accepted 13 October, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/zq7z-8bpt

Abstract

The chiral vortical effect (CVE) – an axial current driven by rotation in chiral matter – appears in systems ranging from relativistic fluids to Weyl semimetals. We present a quantum treatment of a rotating Weyl fermion in a finite cylinder that reproduces the on-axis current density obtained by Vilenkin in an infinite system, while revealing two new phenomena. First, we find that the cross-sectional averaged current density vanishes in the thermodynamic limit, establishing that the bulk vortical response is purely a magnetization current. Second, for spin-polarized boundary conditions, we uncover a robust family of chiral modes that transport axial charge, ΔQ=χN2Δθ/4π, under rotation by angle Δθ, where χ is the Weyl node chirality and N is the number of chiral modes. The pump is independent of temperature, Fermi level, and Weyl velocities, but depends on the UV-sensitive number N. These results clarify the quantum structure of the bulk CVE and reveal a boundary-enforced chiral spectral structure underlying vortical response in Weyl systems.

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