Topological Weyl-like Phonons and Nodal Line Phonons in Graphene

Abstract

By means of first-principles calculations and modeling analysis, we have predicted that the traditional 2D-graphene hosts the topological phononic Weyl-like points (PWs) and phononic nodal line (PNL) in its phonon spectrum. The phonon dispersion of graphene hosts three type-I PWs (both PW1 and PW2 at the BZ corners \emph{K} and \emph{K}', and PW3 locating along the $Γ$-\emph{K} line), one type-II PW4 locating along the $Γ$-\emph{M} line, and one PNL surrounding the centered $Γ$ point in the $q_{x,y}$ plane. The calculations further reveal that Berry curvatures are vanishingly zero throughout the whole BZ, except for the positions of these four pairs of Weyl-like phonons, at which the non-zero singular Berry curvatures appear with the Berry phase of $π$ or -$π$, confirming its topological non-trivial nature. The topologically protected non-trivial phononic edge states have been also evidenced along both the zigzag-edged and armchair-edged boundaries. These results would pave the ways for further studies of topological phononic properties of graphene, such as phononic destructive interference with a suppression of backscattering and intrinsic phononic quantum Hall-like effects.

5 pages, 4 figures