Physicists searched for decades to find chiral fermions as free particles at high energies. Interestingly, they were eventually found as emergent relativistic quasiparticles in condensed matter systems at low energies. Chiral fermions exhibit novel electrical phenomena such as surface Fermi arcs and chiral anomaly. However, their magnetic properties are largely unexplored. In this talk, I will discuss recent efforts to engage the chiral (Weyl) fermions in magnetic interactions. Specifically, I will explain how my group designed a series of materials and experiments to reveal spiral magnetic ordering induced by relativistic Weyl fermions with the goal of establishing topological magnetic textures.

Biography:
Fazel Tafti completed his PhD at the University of Toronto with Prof. Stephen Julian. His thesis was focused on developing transport experiments under ultrahigh pressures in diamond anvil cells. His first postdoc position at the University of Sherbrook with Prof. Louis Taillefer was focused on the thermal conductivity and thermoelectric measurements in iron-based superconductors under intense magnetic fields. He then changed fields from physics to chemistry and completed a second postdoc at Princeton University with Prof. Bob Cava. His research was focused on the chemical synthesis of topological and magnetic materials. He joined the physics department at Boston College in 2016, where he is currently an associate professor. His lab is interdisciplinary between physics, chemistry, and materials science