Chiral wave-packet scattering in Weyl semimetals

In quantum mechanics, a particle is best described by the wave packet instead of the plane wave. Here, we study the wave-packet scattering problem in Weyl semimetals with the low-energy Weyl fermions of different chiralities. Our results show that the wave packet acquires a chirality-protected shift in the single-impurity scattering process. More importantly, the chirality-protected shift can lead to an anomalous scattering probability, and thus affects the transport properties in Weyl semimetals. We find that the ratio between the transport lifetime and the quantum lifetime increases sharply when the Fermi energy approaches the Weyl nodes, providing an explanation of the experimentally observed ultrahigh mobility in topological (Weyl or Dirac) semimetals.