English

Thermodynamic signatures for the existence of Dirac electrons in ZrTe5

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics 2018-01-31 v1

Abstract

We combine transport, magnetization, and torque magnetometry measurements to investigate the electronic structure of ZrTe5 and its evolution with temperature. At fields beyond the quantum limit, we observe a magnetization reversal from paramagnetic to diamagnetic response, which is characteristic of a Dirac semi-metal. We also observe a strong non-linearity in the magnetization that suggests the presence of additional low-lying carriers from other low-energy bands. Finally, we observe a striking sensitivity of the magnetic reversal to temperature that is not readily explained by simple band-structure models, but may be connected to a temperature dependent Lifshitz transition proposed to exist in this material.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1708.03320,
  title  = {Thermodynamic signatures for the existence of Dirac electrons in ZrTe5},
  author = {Nityan L. Nair and Philipp T. Dumitrescu and Sanyum Channa and Sinead M. Griffin and Jeffrey B. Neaton and Andrew C. Potter and James G. Analytis},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1708.03320},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

5 pages, 4 figures