Physical Review Research (May 2021)
Hydrodynamic theory of chiral angular momentum generation in metals
Abstract
We present a hydrodynamic theory to describe a chiral electron system with a Weyl spin-orbit interaction on a field-theoretic basis. Evaluating the momentum flux density as a linear response to a driving electric field, we derive an equation of motion for the orbital angular momentum. It is shown that the chiral nature leads to a dynamic bulk angular momentum generation by inducing a global torque as a response to the applied field. The steady-state angular momentum is calculated taking into account rotational viscosity.