Origin of the quasi-quantized Hall effect in ZrTe5
Abstract
The quantum Hall effect (QHE) is traditionally considered a purely two-dimensional (2D) phenomenon. Recently, a three-dimensional (3D) version of the QHE has been reported in the Dirac semimetal ZrTe5. It was proposed to arise from a magnetic-field-driven Fermi surface instability, transforming the original 3D electron system into a stack of 2D sheets. Here, we report thermodynamic, thermoelectric and charge transport measurements on ZrTe5 in the quantum Hall regime. The measured thermodynamic properties: magnetization and ultrasound propagation, show no signatures of a Fermi surface instability, consistent with in-field single crystal X-ray diffraction. Instead, a direct comparison of the experimental data with linear response calculations based on an effective 3D Dirac Hamiltonian suggests that the quasi-quantization of the observed Hall response is an intrinsic property of the 3D electronic structure. Our findings render the Hall effect in ZrTe5 a truly 3D counterpart of the QHE in 2D systems.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2005.12996,
title = {Origin of the quasi-quantized Hall effect in ZrTe5},
author = {Stanislaw Galeski and Toni Ehmcke and Rafal Wawrzynczak and Pedro Mercado Lozano and Kyungjune Cho and Ankit Sharma and Souvik Das and Felix Kuster and Paolo Sessi and Manuel Brando and Robert Kuchler and Anastasios Markou and Markus Konig and Claudia Felser and Yasmine Sassa and Qiang Li and Genda Gu and Peter Swekis and Martin Zimmermann and Oleh Ivashko and Dennis I. Gorbunov and Sergei Zherlitsyn and Tobias Forster and Stuart Parkin and Joachim Wosnitza and Tobias Meng and Johannes Gooth},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2005.12996},
year = {2023}
}