Helically Magnetized Plasma: From Photonic Fermi‐Arc Metal to Chirality‐Free Uniaxial Medium

Fermi-arc metals, unconventional semi-metals featuring cylindrical Fermi surfaces formed by Fermi arcs, have recently attracted extensive attention for realizing a novel metallic phase that retains chiral anomaly responses yet suppresses quantum oscillations. Although it was proposed that spatially twisting a superlattice of thin Weyl metals can form a Fermi-arc metal, previous local-approximation analyses are valid only for slowly varying systems and cannot capture all rich physics in such systems. Here, we report an optical realization of such a phase in a natural magnetized plasma subjected to a helically modulated magnetic field. Unlike previous studies on artificial heterostructure platforms, we admit a fully analytical, nonperturbative treatment that tracks a complete evolution of Weyl node. In the slowly varying regime, our platform faithfully realizes and manipulates the Fermi-arc metal state in a real system. As the modulation rate increases, Fermi-arcs inheriting opposite chiralities start to hybridize. Remarkably, in the deep nonperturbative limit, chirality vanishes, not through the conventional Weyl point annihilations, but via Fermi arc recombination, resulting in a chirality-free uniaxial optical medium. These findings unveil global topological transitions in nonuniform Weyl systems and open routes toward photonic devices based on engineered Fermi-arc dynamics.

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Publication Details

Journal
Nanophotonics
Published
2026-02-25
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1002/nap2.70035
Primary Topic
Metamaterials and Metasurfaces Applications
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00

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article

Helically Magnetized Plasma: From Photonic Fermi‐Arc Metal to Chirality‐Free Uniaxial Medium

M. Wang, Jinyu Hou, Wanxia Huang, Lei Zhou et al.
Nanophotonics
Metamaterials and Metasurfaces Applications
article

Helically Magnetized Plasma: From Photonic Fermi‐Arc Metal to Chirality‐Free Uniaxial Medium

M. Wang, Jinyu Hou, Wanxia Huang, Lei Zhou, Shaojie Ma
article en

Abstract

Fermi-arc metals, unconventional semi-metals featuring cylindrical Fermi surfaces formed by Fermi arcs, have recently attracted extensive attention for realizing a novel metallic phase that retains chiral anomaly responses yet suppresses quantum oscillations. Although it was proposed that spatially twisting a superlattice of thin Weyl metals can form a Fermi-arc metal, previous local-approximation analyses are valid only for slowly varying systems and cannot capture all rich physics in such systems. Here, we report an optical realization of such a phase in a natural magnetized plasma subjected to a helically modulated magnetic field. Unlike previous studies on artificial heterostructure platforms, we admit a fully analytical, nonperturbative treatment that tracks a complete evolution of Weyl node. In the slowly varying regime, our platform faithfully realizes and manipulates the Fermi-arc metal state in a real system. As the modulation rate increases, Fermi-arcs inheriting opposite chiralities start to hybridize. Remarkably, in the deep nonperturbative limit, chirality vanishes, not through the conventional Weyl point annihilations, but via Fermi arc recombination, resulting in a chirality-free uniaxial optical medium. These findings unveil global topological transitions in nonuniform Weyl systems and open routes toward photonic devices based on engineered Fermi-arc dynamics.

NanophotonicsVol. 15(5)
Fudan University (CN), Shanghai Light Industry Research Institute (CN), Anhui Normal University (CN)
Fudan University, Natural Science Foundation of Anhui Province, National Key Research and Development Program of China
Openalex Percentile: Top 33%
Metamaterials and Metasurfaces Applications
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