Imaging emergent heavy Dirac fermions of a topological Kondo insulator

Pirie, Harris; Liu, Yu; Soumyanarayanan, Anjan; Chen, Pengcheng; He, Yang; Yee, M. M.; Rosa, P. F.  S.; Thompson, J. D.; Kim, Dae-Jeong; Fisk, Z.; Wang, Xiangfeng; Paglione, Johnpierre; Morr, Dirk K.; Hamidian, M. H.; Hoffman, Jennifer E.

doi:10.1038/s41567-019-0700-8

Title: Imaging emergent heavy Dirac fermions of a topological Kondo insulator

Journal Article · Mon Nov 11 00:00:00 EST 2019 · Nature Physics

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-019-0700-8· OSTI ID:1618816

^[1]; Liu, Yu ^[1];

^[2]; Chen, Pengcheng ^[1]; He, Yang ^[1]; Yee, M. M. ^[1]; Rosa, P. F. S. ^[3]; Thompson, J. D. ^[3]; Kim, Dae-Jeong ^[4]; Fisk, Z. ^[4];

^[5]; Paglione, Johnpierre ^[5];

^[6];

^[1];

^[1]

Harvard Univ., Cambridge, MA (United States)
Harvard Univ., Cambridge, MA (United States); Ministry of Trade and Industry (Singapore)
Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
Univ. of California, Irvine, CA (United States)
Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD (United States)
Univ. of Illinois, Chicago, IL (United States)

The interplay between strong electron interactions and band topology is a new frontier in the search for exotic quantum phases. The Kondo insulator SmB₆ has emerged as a promising platform because its correlation-driven bulk gap is predicted to host topological surface modes entangled with f electrons, spawning heavy Dirac fermions. Unlike the conventional surface states of non-interacting topological insulators, heavy Dirac fermions are expected to harbour spontaneously generated quantum anomalous Hall states, non-Abelian quantum statistics, fractionalization and topological order. Yet, the small energy scales required to probe heavy Dirac fermions have complicated their experimental realization. Here we use high-energy-resolution spectroscopic imaging in real and momentum space on SmB₆. On cooling below 35 K, we observe the opening of an insulating gap that expands to 14 meV at 2 K. Within the gap, we image the formation of linearly dispersing surface states with effective masses reaching 410 ± 20 m_e (where me is the mass of the electron). Our findings demonstrate the presence of correlation-driven heavy surface states in SmB₆, in agreement with theoretical predictions. Their high effective mass translates to a large density of states near zero energy, which magnifies their susceptibility to the anticipated novel orders and their potential utility.

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Research Organization:: Univ. of Illinois, Chicago, IL (United States); Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES); US Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR); Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (GBMF); National Science Foundation (NSF)

Grant/Contract Number:: FG02-05ER46225; DMR-1106023; DMR-1410480; FA9550-14-1-0332; GBMF4419; 89233218CNA000001

OSTI ID:: 1618816

Alternate ID(s):: OSTI ID: 1735891

Report Number(s):: LA-UR-18-28712; TRN: US2106823

Journal Information:: Nature Physics, Vol. 16, Issue 1; ISSN 1745-2473

Publisher:: Nature Publishing Group (NPG)Copyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Cited by: 28 works

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Consistency between ARPES and STM measurements on ${SmB}_{6}$ Matt, Christian E.; Pirie, Harris; Soumyanarayanan, Anjan Physical Review B, Vol. 101, Issue 8 https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevb.101.085142	journal	February 2020

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