Chirality and Weyl semimetals: from anomalous transport to topological superconductivity

We encounter chirality - the non-superimposability of mirror images - everyday, from bolts and screws to vector cross products and bio-molecules. Despite its omnipresence, it has subtleties which produce something novel and interesting every now and then. In this talk, I will focus on one such example specific to condensed matter systems: a new phase of matter called Weyl semimetals, whose defining feature is the presence of chiral band intersections in its band structure. Besides providing a table-top realization of Weyl fermions well-known in high energy physics, this phase exhibits numerous exotic properties. I will mainly discuss the chiral anomaly - an apparent non-conservation of electric charge in suitable electromagnetic fields - and describe our proposal for detecting it in a routine optical experiment. Interestingly, the chiral points sometimes dramatically alter the low energy physics even when they themselves live at high energies. I will mention one such instance,where they enable the formation of some unconventional superconductors, including a rare topological one.