English

Discovery of a quantum limit Chern magnet TbMn6Sn6

Materials Science 2020-07-28 v1 Strongly Correlated Electrons

Abstract

The quantum level interplay between geometry, topology, and correlation is at the forefront of fundamental physics. Owing to the unusual lattice geometry and breaking of time-reversal symmetry, kagome magnets are predicted to support intrinsic Chern quantum phases. However, quantum materials hosting ideal spin-orbit coupled kagome lattices with strong out-of-plane magnetization have been lacking. Here we use scanning tunneling microscopy to discover a new topological kagome magnet TbMn6Sn6, which is close to satisfying the above criteria. We visualize its effectively defect-free purely Mn-based ferromagnetic kagome lattice with atomic resolution. Remarkably, its electronic state exhibits distinct Landau quantization upon the application of a magnetic field, and the quantized Landau fan structure features spin-polarized Dirac dispersion with a large Chern gap. We further demonstrate the bulk-boundary correspondence between the Chern gap and topological edge state, as well as the Berry curvature field correspondence of Chern gapped Dirac fermions. Our results point to the realization of a quantum-limit Chern phase in TbMn6Sn6, opening up an avenue for discovering topological quantum phenomena in the RMn6Sn6 (R = rare earth element) family with a variety of magnetic structures. Our visualization of the magnetic bulk-boundary-Berry correspondence covering real and momentum space demonstrates a proof-of-principle method revealing topological magnets.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2006.04881,
  title  = {Discovery of a quantum limit Chern magnet TbMn6Sn6},
  author = {Jia-Xin Yin and Wenlong Ma and Tyler A. Cochran and Xitong Xu and Songtian S. Zhang and Hung-Ju Tien and Nana Shumiya and Guangming Cheng and Kun Jiang and Biao Lian and Zhida Song and Guoqing Chang and Ilya Belopolski and Daniel Multer and Maksim Litskevich and Zijia Cheng and Xian Yang and Bianca Swidler and Huibin Zhou and Hsin Lin and Titus Neupert and Ziqiang Wang and Nan Yao and Tay-Rong Chang and Shuang Jia and M. Zahid Hasan},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2006.04881},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

To appear in Nature (2020)