We report theoretical and experimental evidence that EuCd2As2 in magnetic fields greater than 1.6 T applied along the c axis is a Weyl semimetal with a single pair of Weyl nodes. Ab initio electronic structure calculations, verified at zero field by angle-resolved photoemission spectra, predict Weyl nodes with wavevectors k = (0, 0, ±0.03) × 2π/c at the Fermi level when the Eu spins are fully aligned along the c axis. Shubnikov-de Haas oscillations measured in fields parallel to c reveal a cyclotron effective mass of m * c = 0.08 me and a Fermi surface of extremal area Aext = 0.24 nm −2 , corresponding to 0.1% of the area of the Brillouin zone. The small values of m * c and Aext are consistent with quasiparticles near a Weyl node. The identification of EuCd2As2 as a model Weyl semimetal opens the door to fundamental tests of Weyl physics.
We use resonant elastic x-ray scattering to determine the evolution of magnetic order in EuCd2As2 below TN = 9.5 K, as a function of temperature and applied magnetic field. We find an A-type antiferromagneticstructure with in-plane magnetic moments, and observe dramatic magnetoresistive effects associated with field-induced changes in the magnetic structure and domain populations. Our ab initio electronic structure calculations indicate that the Dirac dispersion found in the nonmagnetic Dirac semimetal Cd3As2 is also present in EuCd2As2, but is gapped for T < TN due to the breaking of C3 symmetry by the magnetic structure.
We report an experimental study of the magnetic order and electronic structure and transport of the layered pnictide EuMnSb2, performed using neutron diffraction, angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES), and magnetotransport measurements. We find that the Eu and Mn sublattices display antiferromagnetic (AFM) order below T Eu N = 21(1) K and T Mn N = 350(2) K respectively. The former can be described by an A-type AFM structure with the Eu spins aligned along the c axis (an in-plane direction), whereas the latter has a C-type AFM structure with Mn moments along the a-axis (perpendicular to the layers). The ARPES spectra reveal Dirac-like linearly dispersing bands near the Fermi energy. Furthermore, our magnetotransport measurements show strongly anisotropic magnetoresistance, and indicate that the Eu sublattice is intimately coupled to conduction electron states near the Dirac point. 75.30.Gw, 74.70.Xa Topological semimetals can host quasiparticle excitations which masquerade as massless fermions due to the linearly-dispersing electronic bands created by interactions with the crystal lattice. The Dirac or Weyl nodes, where the conduction and valence bands meet in momentum space, are robust against small perturbations due to the protection afforded by crystalline symmetries or the topology of the electronic bands 1-5 . Topological semimetals exhibit exceptional electronic transport properties (e.g. extremely high carrier mobility and large linear magnetoresistance) and the control of these exotic charge carriers could help realize a new generation of spintronic devices with low power consumption 6-8 .Such control can potentially be realized in materials in which magnetic order coexists with non-trivial electronic band topology. Recent ARPES, quantum oscillation, neutron diffraction and ab initio band structure studies suggest that materials in the AMnSb 2 (A = Ca, Sr, Ba, Eu, Yb) family display many of the required properties 9-18 . The two-dimensional zig-zag layer of Sb atoms [ Fig. 1] in these 112-pnictides play host to fermions which can be described by the relativistic Dirac or Weyl equations. Furthermore, the electronic transport in this family of materials also displays large magnetoresistive effects, suggesting a coupling between the magnetism and charge carriers 9-17 . These effects could be driven by changes in the electronic band structure topology due to changes in the symmetry of the spin structures induced by the applied field 19 .Within the AMnSb 2 family, EuMnSb 2 is of particular interest because the conducting zig-zag layer of Sb atoms is sandwiched between two interpenetrating magnetic sublattices (Eu and Mn), as shown in Fig. 1(a). Such a structure may lead to an enhancement of the coupling between the topological quasiparticles and mag-netism, compared to that in compounds with a nonmagnetic atom on the A site. The dramatic magnetoresistive behaviour observed in a recent work 20 is evidence for the importance of this coupling. Up to now, however, the nature of the magnetic order in...
We investigated the magnetic structure and dynamics of YbMnBi2, with elastic and inelastic neutron scattering, to shed light on the topological nature of the charge carriers in the antiferromagnetic phase. We confirm C-type antiferromagnetic ordering of the Mn spins below TN = 290 K, and determine that the spins point along the c-axis to within about 3 • . The observed magnon spectrum can be described very well by the same effective spin Hamiltonian as was used previously to model the magnon spectrum of CaMnBi2. Our results show conclusively that the creation of Weyl nodes in YbMnBi2 by the time-reversal-symmetry breaking mechanism can be excluded in the bulk.
We have used spherical neutron polarimetry to investigate the magnetic structure of the Mn spins in the hexagonal semimetal Mn 3 Ge, which exhibits a large intrinsic anomalous Hall effect. Our analysis of the polarimetric data finds a strong preference for a spin structure with E 1g symmetry relative to the D 6h point group. We show that weak ferromagnetism is an inevitable consequence of the symmetry of the observed magnetic structure, and that sixth-order anisotropy is needed to select a unique ground state.
Resonant elastic X-ray scattering (REXS) at the Eu M5 edge reveals an antiferromagnetic structure in layered EuCd2Sb2 at temperatures below TN = 7.4 K with a magnetic propagation vector of (0, 0, 1/2) and spins in the basal plane. Magneto-transport and REXS measurements with an in-plane magnetic field show that features in the magnetoresistance are correlated with changes in the magnetic structure induced by the field. Ab initio electronic structure calculations predict that the observed spin structure gives rise to a gapped Dirac point close to the Fermi level with a gap of ∆E ∼ 0.01 eV. The results of this study indicate that the Eu spins are coupled to conduction electron states near the Dirac point.
The antiferromagnetic (AFM) semimetal YbMnSb 2 has recently been identified as a candidate topological material, driven by time-reversal symmetry breaking. Depending on the ordered arrangement of Mn spins below the Néel temperature, T N = 345 K, the electronic bands near the Fermi energy can either have a Dirac node, a Weyl node, or a nodal line. We have investigated the ground state magnetic structure of YbMnSb 2 using unpolarized and polarized single crystal neutron diffraction. We find that the Mn moments lie along the c axis of the P4/nmm space group and are arranged in a C-type AFM structure, which implies the existence of gapped Dirac nodes near the Fermi level. The results highlight how different magnetic structures can critically affect the topological nature of fermions in semimetals.
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