skip to main content
OSTI.GOV title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: Non-Kondo-like electronic structure in the correlated rare-earth hexaboride Y b B 6

Journal Article · · Physical Review Letters
 [1];  [1];  [1];  [1];  [2];  [1];  [1];  [3];  [4];  [5];  [6];  [7];  [2];  [1]
  1. Princeton Univ., Princeton, NJ (United States)
  2. Univ. of California, Irvine, CA (United States)
  3. National Tsing Hua Univ., Hsinchu (Taiwan)
  4. National Tsing Hua Univ., Hsinchu (Taiwan); Academia Sinica, Taipei (Taiwan)
  5. Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
  6. National Univ. of Singapore (Singapore)
  7. Northeastern Univ., Boston, MA (United States)

Here, we present angle-resolved photoemission studies on the rare-earth-hexaboride YbB6, which has recently been predicted to be a topological Kondo insulator. Our data do not agree with the prediction and instead show that YbB6 exhibits a novel topological insulator state in the absence of a Kondo mechanism. We find that the Fermi level electronic structure of YbB6 has three 2D Dirac cone like surface states enclosing the Kramers’s points, while the f orbital that would be relevant for the Kondo mechanism is ~1 eV below the Fermi level. Our first-principles calculation shows that the topological state that we observe in YbB6 is due to an inversion between Yb d and B p bands. These experimental and theoretical results provide a new approach for realizing novel correlated topological insulator states in rare-earth materials.

Research Organization:
Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC52-06NA25396
OSTI ID:
1304823
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1181380
Report Number(s):
LA-UR-14-23024; PRLTAO
Journal Information:
Physical Review Letters, Vol. 114, Issue 1; ISSN 0031-9007
Publisher:
American Physical Society (APS)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 44 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

References (27)

Heavy fermion semiconductors journal May 2000
Electronic Structure of Strongly Correlated Systems journal January 2011
Colloquium: Topological insulators journal November 2010
Topological insulators and superconductors journal October 2011
Topological insulators with inversion symmetry journal July 2007
A topological Dirac insulator in a quantum spin Hall phase journal April 2008
Observation of a large-gap topological-insulator class with a single Dirac cone on the surface journal May 2009
Three-Dimensional Topological Insulators journal March 2011
Observation of a three-dimensional topological Dirac semimetal phase in high-mobility Cd3As2 journal May 2014
Topological Kondo Insulators journal March 2010
SmB 6 : A Promising Candidate for a Topological Insulator journal December 2011
Correlated Topological Insulators with Mixed Valence journal February 2013
Surface and bulk electronic structure of the strongly correlated system SmB 6 and implications for a topological Kondo insulator journal September 2013
Surface electronic structure of the topological Kondo-insulator candidate correlated electron system SmB6 journal December 2013
Observation of possible topological in-gap surface states in the Kondo insulator SmB6 by photoemission journal December 2013
Low-temperature surface conduction in the Kondo insulator SmB 6 journal November 2013
Topological surface state in the Kondo insulator samarium hexaboride journal March 2014
Surface Hall Effect and Nonlocal Transport in SmB6: Evidence for Surface Conduction journal November 2013
Hybridization, Inter-Ion Correlation, and Surface States in the Kondo Insulator SmB 6 journal February 2013
Magnetic and transport properties of pure and carbon‐doped divalent RE hexaboride single crystals journal January 1980
Topological Crystalline Kondo Insulator in Mixed Valence Ytterbium Borides journal January 2014
Generalized Gradient Approximation Made Simple journal October 1996
Projector augmented-wave method journal December 1994
From ultrasoft pseudopotentials to the projector augmented-wave method journal January 1999
Ab initio molecular dynamics for open-shell transition metals journal November 1993
Efficiency of ab-initio total energy calculations for metals and semiconductors using a plane-wave basis set journal July 1996
Contribution à l'étude des borures à teneur élevée en bore journal January 1954

Cited By (8)

Discovery of topological nodal-line fermionic phase in a magnetic material GdSbTe journal September 2018
Surface resonance of the ( 2 × 1 ) reconstructed lanthanum hexaboride (001)-cleavage plane: A combined STM and DFT study journal November 2019
Observation of the spin-polarized surface state in a noncentrosymmetric superconductor BiPd journal November 2016
Exploring itinerant states in divalent hexaborides using rare-earth L edge resonant inelastic x-ray scattering journal December 2019
Pressure-induced exotic states in rare earth hexaborides journal July 2016
Roadmap on plasmonics journal March 2018
Observation of Dirac-Like Semi-Metallic Phase in NdSb text January 2016
Observation of the spin-polarized surface state in a noncentrosymmetric superconductor BiPd text January 2016

Similar Records

Fermi surface topology and hot spot distribution in the Kondo lattice system CeB6
Journal Article · Fri Sep 18 00:00:00 EDT 2015 · Physical Review. B, Condensed Matter and Materials Physics · OSTI ID:1304823

Bulk Rotational Symmetry Breaking in Kondo Insulator SmB 6
Journal Article · Mon Sep 25 00:00:00 EDT 2017 · Physical Review. X · OSTI ID:1304823

Hall Anomaly, Quantum Oscillations and Possible Lifshitz Transitions in Kondo Insulator YbB 12 : Evidence for Unconventional Charge Transport
Journal Article · Thu Jun 02 00:00:00 EDT 2022 · Physical Review. X · OSTI ID:1304823