English

Generating Weyl semimetals from alkali metals

Materials Science 2020-06-11 v1 Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics

Abstract

We report the discovery of a time-reversal symmetric Weyl semimetal obtained by modifying a model Hamiltonian describing the electronic properties of conventional alkali metals. The artificially generated Weyl semimetal features four isolated Weyl nodes in its bulk band structure and displays characteristic surface Fermi arcs arising from topologically protected surface states. The Weyl semimetal occurs as an intermediate state between a conventional band insulator and a three-dimensional topological insulator. The generation of topological Weyl semimetals from conventional metals opens a new route towards the deterministic design of simple materials hosting Weyl fermions.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1804.10474,
  title  = {Generating Weyl semimetals from alkali metals},
  author = {Joseba Goikoetxea and Jorge Bravo-Abad and Jaime Merino},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1804.10474},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

5 pages, 3 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-23T01:37:59.922Z