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Title: Topological quantum properties of chiral crystals

Journal Article · · Nature Materials
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)

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
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 185 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (36)

Flexible and Ultrasoft Inorganic 1D Semiconductor and Heterostructure Systems Based on SnIP journal February 2019
Chirality‐Driven Transportation and Oxidation Prevention by Chiral Selenium Nanoparticles journal March 2020
Chirality‐Driven Transportation and Oxidation Prevention by Chiral Selenium Nanoparticles journal January 2020
Observation of a topological nodal surface and its surface-state arcs in an artificial acoustic crystal journal November 2019
Chiral fermion reversal in chiral crystals journal December 2019
Strong and fragile topological Dirac semimetals with higher-order Fermi arcs journal January 2020
Chirality meets topology journal October 2018
Chiral topological semimetal with multifold band crossings and long Fermi arcs journal May 2019
Topological chiral crystals with helicoid-arc quantum states journal March 2019
Topological metal and noncentrosymmetric superconductor α-BiPd as an efficient candidate for the hydrogen evolution reaction journal January 2019
Multifold nodal points in magnetic materials journal October 2019
Theory for the negative longitudinal magnetoresistance in the quantum limit of Kramers Weyl semimetals journal November 2018
Emergence of topological phases by stacking of two-dimensional lattices with nonsymmorphic symmetry journal December 2018
Spectral and optical properties of Ag 3 Au(Se 2 ,Te 2 ) and dark matter detection journal October 2019
Optical response of the chiral topological semimetal RhSi journal October 2019
Large Fermi arc and robust Weyl semimetal phase in Ag 2 S journal November 2019
Nodal chain semimetal in geometrically frustrated systems journal March 2019
Photoemission Spectroscopic Evidence for the Dirac Nodal Line in the Monoclinic Semimetal SrAs 3 journal February 2020
Experimental demonstration of acoustic semimetal with topologically charged nodal surface journal February 2020
Quasiparticle interference evidence of the topological Fermi arc states in chiral fermionic semimetal CoSi journal December 2019
Growth and Strain Engineering of Trigonal Te for Topological Quantum Phases in Non-Symmorphic Chiral Crystals journal September 2019
Strong and fragile topological Dirac semimetals with higher-order Fermi arcs text January 2020
Theory for the negative longitudinal magnetoresistance in the quantum limit of Kramers Weyl semimetals text January 2018
From Dirac semimetals to topological phases in three dimensions: a coupled wire construction text January 2017
Chiral Optical Response of Multifold Fermions text January 2018
Fermi surface, possible unconventional fermions, and unusually robust resistive critical fields in the chiral-structured superconductor AuBe text January 2018
Magnetoelectric Effects in Gyrotropic Superconductors text January 2019
Linear optical conductivity of chiral multifold fermions text January 2019
Multifold nodal points in magnetic materials text January 2019
Difference frequency generation in topological semimetals text January 2019
Strong and Fragile Topological Dirac Semimetals with Higher-Order Fermi Arcs text January 2019
Strong bulk photovoltaic effect in chiral crystal in the visible spectrum text January 2019
Radial spin texture in elemental tellurium with chiral crystal structure text January 2019
Growth and Strain Engineering of Trigonal Te for Topological Quantum Phases in Non-Symmorphic Chiral Crystals preprint January 2019
Theory for the negative longitudinal magnetoresistance in the quantum limit of Kramers Weyl semimetals text January 2020
Fixing Left and Right: Assignment of Chiral Elemental Crystal Structures using Kikuchi Diffraction preprint January 2020

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