Kubo conductivity for anisotropic tilted Dirac semimetals and its application to 8-Pmmn borophene: The role of different frequency, temperature and scattering limits

Abstract

The electronic and optical conductivities for anisotropic tilted Dirac semimetals are calculated using the Kubo formula. As in graphene, it is shown that the minimal conductivity is sensitive to the order in which the temperature, frequency and scattering limits are taken. Both intraband and interband scattering are found to be direction dependent. In the high frequency and low temperature limit, the conductivities do not depend on frequency and are weighted by the anisotropy in such a way that the geometrical mean \(\sqrt{\sigma_{xx}\sigma_{yy}}\) of the conductivity is the same as in graphene. This results from the fact that in the zero temperature limit, interband transitions are not affected by the tilt in the dispersion, a result that is physically interpreted as a global tilting of the allowed transitions. Such result is verified by an independent and direct calculation of the absorption coefficient using the Fermi golden rule. However, as temperature is raised, an interesting minimum is observed in the interband scattering, interpreted here as a result of the interplay between the tilt and the chemical potential increasing with temperature.