Magnetotransport in Weyl semimetals in the quantum limit: Role of topological surface states

We theoretically study the magnetoconductivity of Weyl semimetals with a surface boundary under E ||B geometry and demonstrate that the topological surface state plays an essential role in the magnetotransport. In the long-range-disorder limit where the scattering between the two Weyl nodes vanishes, the conductivity diverges in the bulk model (i.e., periodic boundary condition) as usually expected since the direct internode relaxation is absent. In the presence of the surface, however, the internode relaxation always takes place through the mediation by the surface states, and that prevents the conductivity divergence. The magnetic-field dependence becomes also quite different between the two cases, where the conductivity linearly increases in B in the surface boundary case, in contrast to B -independent behavior in the bulk periodic case. This is an interesting example in which the same system exhibits completely different properties in the surface boundary condition and the periodic boundary condition even in the macroscopic size limit. In the short-range regime where the direct intervalley scattering is dominant, the surface states are irrelevant, and the conductivity approaches that of the bulk periodic model.