Topological quantum properties of chiral crystals
- 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
- 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
- Univ. of Zurich (Switzerland). Dept. of Physics
- Princeton Univ., NJ (United States). Dept. of Physics
- National Sun Yat-Sen Univ., Kaoshiung (Taiwan). Dept. of Physics
- National Univ. of Singapore (Singapore). Dept of Physics, Centre for Advanced 2D Materials, and Graphene Research Centre
- National Cheng Kung Univ., Tainan City (Taiwan). 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
- Princeton Univ., NJ (United States). Dept. of Physics; Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
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.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- 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)
- 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
- OSTI ID:
- 1638188
- Journal Information:
- Nature Materials, Vol. 17, Issue 11; ISSN 1476-1122
- Publisher:
- Springer Nature - Nature Publishing GroupCopyright Statement
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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