English

Time-Reversal Symmetry Breaking Type-II Weyl State in YbMnBi2

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics 2016-03-31 v2 Materials Science

Abstract

Detection of Dirac, Majorana and Weyl fermions in real materials may significantly strengthen the bridge between high-energy and condensed-matter physics. While the presence of Dirac fermions is well established in graphene and topological insulators, Majorana particles have been reported recently and evidence for Weyl fermions in non-centrosymmetric crystals has been found only a couple of months ago, the 'magnetic' Weyl fermions are still elusive despite numerous theoretical predictions and intense experimental search. In order to detect a time-reversal symmetry breaking Weyl state we designed two materials with Fermi velocities superior to that of graphene and present here the experimental evidence of the realization of such a state in one of them, YbMnBi2. We model the time reversal symmetry breaking observed by magnetization measurements by a canted antiferromagnetic state and find a number of Weyl points both above and below the Fermi level. Using angle-resolved photoemission, we directly observe these latter Weyl points and a hallmark of the exotic state - the arc of the surface states which connects these points. Our results not only provide a fundamental link between the two areas of physics, but also demonstrate the practical way to design novel materials with exotic properties.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1507.04847,
  title  = {Time-Reversal Symmetry Breaking Type-II Weyl State in YbMnBi2},
  author = {Sergey Borisenko and Daniil Evtushinsky and Quinn Gibson and Alexander Yaresko and Timur Kim and M. N. Ali and Bernd Buechner and Moritz Hoesch and Robert J. Cava},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1507.04847},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

Version resubmitted to Nature on the 9th of November 2015