We demonstrate that the topological charge associated with nontrivial phononic Weyl points may be interchanged between nonadjacent locations within the Brillouin zone of a strained crystal. This occurs in our NiMnSb test case upon passing between tensile and compressive uniaxial strain through the higher-symmetry unstrained geometry, and compensates for what would otherwise appear to be nonconservation of topological charge. The phenomenon is dictated by the material's crystallographic point group, and should be replicated in other crystals of similar symmetry.

• Received 9 October 2023
• Accepted 30 January 2024

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.109.085140

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

Published by the American Physical Society