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Title: Topological quantum properties of chiral crystals

Abstract

Chiral crystals are materials with a lattice structure that has a well-defined handedness due to the lack of inversion, mirror or other roto-inversion symmetries. Although it has been shown that the presence of crystalline symmetries can protect topological band crossings, the topological electronic properties of chiral crystals remain largely uncharacterized. In this paper we show that Kramers–Weyl fermions are a universal topological electronic property of all non-magnetic chiral crystals with spin–orbit coupling and are guaranteed by structural chirality, lattice translation and time-reversal symmetry. Unlike conventional Weyl fermions, they appear at time-reversal-invariant momenta. We identify representative chiral materials in 33 of the 65 chiral space groups in which Kramers–Weyl fermions are relevant to the low-energy physics. We determine that all point-like nodal degeneracies in non-magnetic chiral crystals with relevant spin–orbit coupling carry non-trivial Chern numbers. Kramers–Weyl materials can exhibit a monopole-like electron spin texture and topologically non-trivial bulk Fermi surfaces over an unusually large energy window.

Authors:
ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [2];  [3];  [4];  [4]; ORCiD logo [5]; ORCiD logo [6];  [6];  [7]; ORCiD logo [3];  [4];  [8]; ORCiD logo [9]
  1. Princeton Univ., NJ (United States). Dept. of Physics; National Univ. of Singapore (Singapore). Dept of Physics, Centre for Advanced 2D Materials, and Graphene Research Centre; Academia Sinica, Taipei (Taiwan). Inst. of Physics
  2. Princeton Univ., NJ (United States). Dept. of Physics; Stockholm Univ. (Sweden); KTH Royal Inst. of Technology, Stockholm (Sweden); Univ. of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA (United States). Dept. of Physics and Astronomy
  3. Univ. of Zurich (Switzerland). Dept. of Physics
  4. Princeton Univ., NJ (United States). Dept. of Physics
  5. National Sun Yat-Sen Univ., Kaoshiung (Taiwan). Dept. of Physics
  6. National Univ. of Singapore (Singapore). Dept of Physics, Centre for Advanced 2D Materials, and Graphene Research Centre
  7. National Cheng Kung Univ., Tainan City (Taiwan). Dept. of Physics
  8. National Univ. of Singapore (Singapore). Dept of Physics, Centre for Advanced 2D Materials, and Graphene Research Centre; Academia Sinica, Taipei (Taiwan). Inst. of Physics
  9. Princeton Univ., NJ (United States). Dept. of Physics; Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Org.:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES); Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation; Singapore National Science Foundation; Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics; Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF); European Research Council (ERC); Ministry of Science and Technology of China (MOST)
OSTI Identifier:
1638188
Grant/Contract Number:  
AC02-05CH11231; FG-02-05ER46200; GBMF4547; NRF-NRFF2013-03; ERC-DM-321031; SC0016239; ONR-N00014-14-1-0330; 200021-169061; ERC-StG-Neupert-757867-PARATOP; 107-2636-M-006- 004
Resource Type:
Accepted Manuscript
Journal Name:
Nature Materials
Additional Journal Information:
Journal Volume: 17; Journal Issue: 11; Journal ID: ISSN 1476-1122
Publisher:
Springer Nature - Nature Publishing Group
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
36 MATERIALS SCIENCE; condensed-matter physics; electronic properties and materials; materials science; structure of solids and liquids

Citation Formats

Chang, Guoqing, Wieder, Benjamin J., Schindler, Frank, Sanchez, Daniel S., Belopolski, Ilya, Huang, Shin-Ming, Singh, Bahadur, Wu, Di, Chang, Tay-Rong, Neupert, Titus, Xu, Su-Yang, Lin, Hsin, and Hasan, M. Zahid. Topological quantum properties of chiral crystals. United States: N. p., 2018. Web. doi:10.1038/s41563-018-0169-3.
Chang, Guoqing, Wieder, Benjamin J., Schindler, Frank, Sanchez, Daniel S., Belopolski, Ilya, Huang, Shin-Ming, Singh, Bahadur, Wu, Di, Chang, Tay-Rong, Neupert, Titus, Xu, Su-Yang, Lin, Hsin, & Hasan, M. Zahid. Topological quantum properties of chiral crystals. United States. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-018-0169-3
Chang, Guoqing, Wieder, Benjamin J., Schindler, Frank, Sanchez, Daniel S., Belopolski, Ilya, Huang, Shin-Ming, Singh, Bahadur, Wu, Di, Chang, Tay-Rong, Neupert, Titus, Xu, Su-Yang, Lin, Hsin, and Hasan, M. Zahid. Mon . "Topological quantum properties of chiral crystals". United States. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-018-0169-3. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1638188.
@article{osti_1638188,
title = {Topological quantum properties of chiral crystals},
author = {Chang, Guoqing and Wieder, Benjamin J. and Schindler, Frank and Sanchez, Daniel S. and Belopolski, Ilya and Huang, Shin-Ming and Singh, Bahadur and Wu, Di and Chang, Tay-Rong and Neupert, Titus and Xu, Su-Yang and Lin, Hsin and Hasan, M. Zahid},
abstractNote = {Chiral crystals are materials with a lattice structure that has a well-defined handedness due to the lack of inversion, mirror or other roto-inversion symmetries. Although it has been shown that the presence of crystalline symmetries can protect topological band crossings, the topological electronic properties of chiral crystals remain largely uncharacterized. In this paper we show that Kramers–Weyl fermions are a universal topological electronic property of all non-magnetic chiral crystals with spin–orbit coupling and are guaranteed by structural chirality, lattice translation and time-reversal symmetry. Unlike conventional Weyl fermions, they appear at time-reversal-invariant momenta. We identify representative chiral materials in 33 of the 65 chiral space groups in which Kramers–Weyl fermions are relevant to the low-energy physics. We determine that all point-like nodal degeneracies in non-magnetic chiral crystals with relevant spin–orbit coupling carry non-trivial Chern numbers. Kramers–Weyl materials can exhibit a monopole-like electron spin texture and topologically non-trivial bulk Fermi surfaces over an unusually large energy window.},
doi = {10.1038/s41563-018-0169-3},
journal = {Nature Materials},
number = 11,
volume = 17,
place = {United States},
year = {Mon Oct 01 00:00:00 EDT 2018},
month = {Mon Oct 01 00:00:00 EDT 2018}
}

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