A Weyl Fermion semimetal with surface Fermi arcs in the transition metal monopnictide TaAs class
10.1038/ncomms8373
Crossref journal-article
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Nature Communications (297)
Abstract

AbstractWeyl fermions are massless chiral fermions that play an important role in quantum field theory but have never been observed as fundamental particles. A Weyl semimetal is an unusual crystal that hosts Weyl fermions as quasiparticle excitations and features Fermi arcs on its surface. Such a semimetal not only provides a condensed matter realization of the anomalies in quantum field theories but also demonstrates the topological classification beyond the gapped topological insulators. Here, we identify a topological Weyl semimetal state in the transition metal monopnictide materials class. Our first-principles calculations on TaAs reveal its bulk Weyl fermion cones and surface Fermi arcs. Our results show that in the TaAs-type materials the Weyl semimetal state does not depend on fine-tuning of chemical composition or magnetic order, which opens the door for the experimental realization of Weyl semimetals and Fermi arc surface states in real materials.

Bibliography

Huang, S.-M., Xu, S.-Y., Belopolski, I., Lee, C.-C., Chang, G., Wang, B., Alidoust, N., Bian, G., Neupane, M., Zhang, C., Jia, S., Bansil, A., Lin, H., & Hasan, M. Z. (2015). A Weyl Fermion semimetal with surface Fermi arcs in the transition metal monopnictide TaAs class. Nature Communications, 6(1).

Authors 14
  1. Shin-Ming Huang (first)
  2. Su-Yang Xu (additional)
  3. Ilya Belopolski (additional)
  4. Chi-Cheng Lee (additional)
  5. Guoqing Chang (additional)
  6. BaoKai Wang (additional)
  7. Nasser Alidoust (additional)
  8. Guang Bian (additional)
  9. Madhab Neupane (additional)
  10. Chenglong Zhang (additional)
  11. Shuang Jia (additional)
  12. Arun Bansil (additional)
  13. Hsin Lin (additional)
  14. M. Zahid Hasan (additional)
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Dates
Type When
Created 10 years, 2 months ago (June 12, 2015, 5:48 a.m.)
Deposited 2 years, 7 months ago (Jan. 5, 2023, 6:25 a.m.)
Indexed 3 days, 7 hours ago (Aug. 26, 2025, 2:48 a.m.)
Issued 10 years, 2 months ago (June 12, 2015)
Published 10 years, 2 months ago (June 12, 2015)
Published Online 10 years, 2 months ago (June 12, 2015)
Funders 0

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@article{Huang_2015, title={A Weyl Fermion semimetal with surface Fermi arcs in the transition metal monopnictide TaAs class}, volume={6}, ISSN={2041-1723}, url={http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms8373}, DOI={10.1038/ncomms8373}, number={1}, journal={Nature Communications}, publisher={Springer Science and Business Media LLC}, author={Huang, Shin-Ming and Xu, Su-Yang and Belopolski, Ilya and Lee, Chi-Cheng and Chang, Guoqing and Wang, BaoKai and Alidoust, Nasser and Bian, Guang and Neupane, Madhab and Zhang, Chenglong and Jia, Shuang and Bansil, Arun and Lin, Hsin and Hasan, M. Zahid}, year={2015}, month=jun }