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Topological phase transition induced extreme magnetoresistance in TaSb$_{2}$

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2016-03-08 v1 Materials Science

Abstract

We report extremely large positive magnetoresistance of 1.72 million percent in single crystal TaSb2_{2} at moderate conditions of 1.5 K and 15 T. The quadratic growth of magnetoresistance (MR B1.96\propto\,B^{1.96}) is not saturating up to 15 T, a manifestation of nearly perfect compensation with <0.1%<0.1\% mismatch between electron and hole pockets in this semimetal. The compensation mechanism is confirmed by temperature-dependent MR, Hall and thermoelectric coefficients of Nernst and Seebeck, revealing two pronounced Fermi surface reconstruction processes without spontaneous symmetry breaking, \textit{i.e.} Lifshitz transitions, at around 20 K and 60 K, respectively. Using quantum oscillations of magnetoresistance and magnetic susceptibility, supported by density-functional theory calculations, we determined that the main hole Fermi surface of TaSb2_{2} forms a unique shoulder structure along the FLF-L line. The flat band top of this shoulder pocket is just a few meV above the Fermi level, leading to the observed topological phase transition at 20 K when the shoulder pocket disappears. Further increase in temperature pushes the Fermi level to the band top of the main hole pocket, induced the second Lifshitz transition at 60 K when hole pocket vanishes completely.

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Cite

@article{arxiv.1603.01717,
  title  = {Topological phase transition induced extreme magnetoresistance in TaSb$_{2}$},
  author = {Zheng Wang and Yupeng Li and Yunhao Lu and Zhixuan Shen and Feng Sheng and Chunmu Feng and Yi Zheng and Zhuan Xu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1603.01717},
  year   = {2016}
}

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