Negative magnetoresistance in Weyl semimetals NbAs and NbP: Intrinsic chiral anomaly and extrinsic effects

doi:10.1007/s11467-016-0636-8

Frontiers of Physics

2017, Vol. 12

Issue (3): 127205 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11467-016-0636-8

本期目录

Negative magnetoresistance in Weyl semimetals NbAs and NbP: Intrinsic chiral anomaly and extrinsic effects

Yupeng Li¹,Zhen Wang^1,²,Pengshan Li³,Xiaojun Yang^1,²,Zhixuan Shen¹,Feng Sheng¹,Xiaodong Li³,Yunhao Lu²,Yi Zheng^1,^4,⁵(

),Zhu-An Xu^1,^2,^4,⁵(

)

¹. Department of Physics, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China
². State Key Lab of Silicon Materials, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China
³. Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China
⁴. Zhejiang California International NanoSystems Institute, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China
⁵. Collaborative Innovation Centre of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing 210093, China

全文: PDF(1187 KB)

Abstract：

Chiral anomaly-induced negative magnetoresistance (NMR) has been widely used as critical transport evidence for the existence of Weyl fermions in topological semimetals. In this mini-review, we discuss the general observation of NMR phenomena in non-centrosymmetric NbP and NbAs. We show that NMR can arise from the intrinsic chiral anomaly of Weyl fermions and/or extrinsic effects, such as the superimposition of Hall signals; field-dependent inhomogeneous current flow in the bulk, i.e., current jetting; and weak localization (WL) of coexistent trivial carriers. The WL-controlled NMR is heavily dependent on sample quality and is characterized by a pronounced crossover from positive to negative MR growth at elevated temperatures, resulting from the competition between the phase coherence time and the spin-orbital scattering constant of the bulk trivial pockets. Thus, the correlation between the NMR and the chiral anomaly need to be scrutinized without the support of complimentary techniques. Because of the lifting of spin degeneracy, the spin orientations of Weyl fermions are either parallel or antiparallel to the momentum, which is a unique physical property known as helicity. The conservation of helicity provides strong protection for the transport of Weyl fermions, which can only be effectively scattered by magnetic impurities. Chemical doping with magnetic and non-magnetic impurities is thus more convincing than the NMR method for detecting the existence of Weyl fermions.

Key words： Weyl semimetals chiral anomaly negative magnetoresistance extrinsic effects

收稿日期: 2016-08-22 出版日期: 2016-12-19

Corresponding Author(s): Yi Zheng,Zhu-An Xu

引用本文:

. [J]. Frontiers of Physics, 2017, 12(3): 127205.
Yupeng Li,Zhen Wang,Pengshan Li,Xiaojun Yang,Zhixuan Shen,Feng Sheng,Xiaodong Li,Yunhao Lu,Yi Zheng,Zhu-An Xu. Negative magnetoresistance in Weyl semimetals NbAs and NbP: Intrinsic chiral anomaly and extrinsic effects. Front. Phys. , 2017, 12(3): 127205.

链接本文:

https://academic.hep.com.cn/fop/CN/10.1007/s11467-016-0636-8
https://academic.hep.com.cn/fop/CN/Y2017/V12/I3/127205

1	P. R. Wallace, The band theory of graphite, Phys. Rev. 71(9), 622 (1947) https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRev.71.622
2	H. Weyl, Elektron und gravitation. I, Z. Phys. 56(5–6), 330 (1929) https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01339504
3	K. S. Novoselov, A. K. Geim, S. V. Morozov, D. Jiang, M. I. Katsnelson, I. V. Grigorieva, S. V. Dubonos, and A. A. Firsov, Two-dimensional gas of massless Dirac fermions in graphene, Nature 438(7065), 197 (2005) https://doi.org/10.1038/nature04233
4	Y. B. Zhang, Y. W. Tan, H. L. Stormer, and P. Kim, Experimental observation of the quantum Hall effect and Berry’s phase in graphene, Nature 438(7065), 201 (2005) https://doi.org/10.1038/nature04235
5	M. Z. Hasan and C. L. Kane, Colloquium: Topological insulators, Rev. Mod. Phys. 82(4), 3045 (2010) https://doi.org/10.1103/RevModPhys.82.3045
6	X. L. Qi and S. C. Zhang, Topological insulators and superconductors, Rev. Mod. Phys. 83(4), 1057 (2011) https://doi.org/10.1103/RevModPhys.83.1057
7	S. M. Young, S. Zaheer, J. C. Y. Teo, C. L. Kane, E. J. Mele, and A. M. Rappe, Dirac semimetal in three dimensions, Phys. Rev. Lett. 108(14), 140405 (2012) https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.108.140405
8	Z. Wang, H. Weng, Q. Wu, X. Dai, and Z. Fang, Threedimensional Dirac semimetal and quantum transport in Cd3As2, Phys. Rev. B 88(12), 125427 (2013) https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.88.125427
9	L. Tian, Q. Gibson, M. N. Ali, M. Liu, R. J. Cava, and N. P. Ong, Ultrahigh mobility and giant magnetoresistance in the Dirac semimetal Cd3As2, Nat. Mater. 14, 280 (2015)
10	X. G. Wan, A. M. Turner, A. Vishwanath, and S. Y. Savrasov, Topological semimetal and Fermi-arc surface states in the electronic structure of pyrochlore iridates, Phys. Rev. B 83(20), 205101 (2011) https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.83.205101
11	H. Weng, C. Fang, Z. Fang, B. A. Bernevig, and X. Dai, Weyl semimetal phase in noncentrosymmetric transition-metal monophosphides, Phys. Rev. X 5(1), 011029 (2015) https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.5.011029
12	S. Huang, S. Y. Xu, I. Belopolski, C. Lee, G. Chang, B. Wang, N. Alidoust, G. Bian, M. Neupane, C. Zhang, S. Jia, A. Bansil, H. Lin, and M. Z. Hasan, A Weyl Fermion semimetal with surface Fermi arcs in the transition metal monopnictide TaAs class, Nat. Commun. 6, 7373 (2015) https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms8373
13	G. Bian, T. R. Chang, R. Sankar, S. Y. Xu, H. Zheng, T. Neupert, C. K. Chiu, S. M. Huang, G. Chang, I. Belopolski, D. S. Sanchez, M. Neupane, N. Alidoust, C. Liu, B.K. Wang, C.-C. Lee, H.-T. Jeng, A. Bansil, F. Chou, H. Lin, and M. Z. Hasan, Topological nodalline fermions in the non-centrosymmetric superconductor compound PbTaSe2, arXiv: 1505.03069 (2015)
14	G. B. Halász and L. Balents, Time-reversal invariant realization of the Weyl semimetal phase, Phys. Rev. B 85(3), 035103 (2012) https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.85.035103
15	S.Y. Xu, N. Alidoust, I. Belopolski, Z. Yuan, G. Bian, T.R. Chang, H. Zheng, V. N. Strocov, D. S. Sanchez, G. Chang, C. Zhang, D. Mou, Y. Wu, L. Huang, C.C. Lee, S.M. Huang, B. K. Wang, A. Bansil, H.T. Jeng, T. Neupert, A. Kaminski, H. Lin, S. Jia, and M. Z. Hasan, Discovery of a Weyl fermion state with Fermi arcs in niobium arsenide, Nat. Phys. 11(9), 748 (2015) https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys3437
16	B. Q. Lv, H. M. Weng, B. B. Fu, X. P. Wang, H. Miao, J. Ma, P. Richard, X. C. Huang, L. X. Zhao, G. F. Chen, Z. Fang, X. Dai, T. Qian, and H. Ding, Experimental discovery of Weyl semimetal TaAs, Phys. Rev. X 5(3), 031013 (2015) https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.5.031013
17	B. Q. Lv, S. Muff, T. Qian, Z. D. Song, S. M. Nie, N. Xu, P. Richard, C. E. Matt, N. C. Plumb, L. X. Zhao, G. F. Chen, Z. Fang, X. Dai, J. H. Dil, J. Mesot, M. Shi, H. M. Weng, and H. Ding, Observation of Fermiarc spin texture in TaAs, Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 217601 (2015) https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.115.217601
18	S. Xu, I. Belopolski, N. Alidoust, M. Neupane, G. Bian, C. Zhang, R. Sankar, G. Chang, Z. Yuan, C. C. Lee, S.M. Huang, H. Zheng, J. Ma, D. S. Sanchez, B. Wang, A. Bansil, F. Chou, P. P. Shibayev, H. Lin, S. Jia, and M. Z. Hasan, Discovery of a Weyl fermion semimetal and topological Fermi arcs, Science 349(6248), 613 (2015) https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaa9297
19	C. Zhang, Z. Yuan, S. Xu, Z. Lin, B. Tong, M. Z. Hasan, J. Wang, C. Zhang, and S. Jia, Tantalum monoarsenide: An exotic compensated semimetal, arXiv: 1502.00251 (2015)
20	X. Huang, L. Zhao, Y. Long, P. Wang, D. Chen, Z. Yang, H. Liang, M. Xue, H. M. Weng, Z. Fang, X. Dai, and G. Chen, Observation of the chiral anomaly induced negative magnetoresistance in 3D Weyl semimetal TaAs, Phys. Rev. X 5(3), 031023 (2015) https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.5.031023
21	C. Shekhar, A. K. Nayak, Y. Sun, M. Schmidt, M. Nicklas, I. Leermakers, U. Zeitler, Y. Skourski, J. Wosnitza, Z. Liu, Y. Chen, W. Schnelle, H. Borrmann, Y. Grin, C. Felser, and B. H. Yan, Extremely large magnetoresistance and ultrahigh mobility in the topological Weyl semimetal candidate NbP, Nat. Phys. 11(8), 645 (2015) https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys3372
22	Z. Wang, Y. Zheng, Z. X. Shen, Y. Zhou, X. J. Yang, Y. P. Li, C. M. Feng, and Z. A. Xu, Helicity protected ultrahigh mobility Weyl fermions in NbP, Phys. Rev. B 93, 121112(R) (2016)
23	A. Narayanan, M. D. Watson, S. F. Blake, N. Bruyant, L. Drigo, Y. L. Chen, D. Prabhakaran, B. Yan, C. Felser, T. Kong, P. C. Canfield, and A. I. Coldea, Linear magnetoresistance caused by mobility fluctuations in n-doped Cd3As2, Phys. Rev. Lett. 114(11), 117201 (2015) https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.114.117201
24	P. Hosur and X. L. Qi, Recent developments in transport phenomena in Weyl semimetals, C. R. Phys. 14(9– 10), 857 (2013)
25	I. A. Luk’yanchuk and Y. Kopelevich, Phase analysis of quantum oscillation in graphite, Phys. Rev. Lett. 93(16), 166402 (2004) https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.93.166402
26	H. B. Nielsen and M. Ninomiya, The Adler-Bell-Jackiw anomaly and Weyl fermions in a crystal, Phys. Lett. B 130(6), 389 (1983) https://doi.org/10.1016/0370-2693(83)91529-0
27	J. Xiong, S. K. Kushwaha, T. Liang, J. W. Krizan, M. Hirschberger, W. Wang, R. J. Cava, and N. P. Ong, Evidence for the chiral anomaly in the Dirac semimetal Na3Bi, Science 350(6259), 413 (2015) https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aac6089
28	H. J. Kim, K. S. Kim, J. F. Wang, M. Sasaki, N. Satoh, A. Ohnishi, M. Kitaura, M. Yang, and L. Li, Dirac versus Weyl fermions in topoogical insulators: Adler–Bell– Jackiw anomaly in transport phenomena, Phys. Rev. Lett. 111(24), 246603 (2013) https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.111.246603
29	Q. Li, D. E. Kharzeev, C. Zhang, Y. Huang, I. Pletikosic, A. V. Fedorov, R. D. Zhong, J. A. Schneeloch, G. D. Gu, and T. Valla, Observation of the chiral magnetic effect in ZrTe5, arXiv: 1412.6543 (2014)
30	F. Arnold, C. Shekhar, S.-C. Wu, Y. Sun, R. Donizeth dos Reis, N. Kumar, M. Naumann, M. O. Ajeesh, M. Schmidt, A. G. Grushin, J. H. Bardarson, M. Baenitz, D. Sokolov, H. Borrmann, M. Nicklas, C. Felser, E. Hassinger, and B. Yan, Large and unsaturated negative magnetoresistance induced by the chiral anomaly in the Weyl semimetal TaP, arXiv: 1506.06577 (2015)
31	X. J. Yang, Y. P. Li, Z. Wang, Y. Zheng, and Z. A. Xu, Chiral anomaly induced negative magnetoresistance in topological Weyl semimetal NbAs, arXiv: 1506.03190 (2015)
32	M. Hirschberger, S. Kushwaha, Z. Wang, Q. Gibson, S. Liang, C. A. Belvin, B. A. Bernevig, R. J. Cava, and N. P. Ong, The chiral anomaly and thermopower of Weyl fermions in the half-Heusler GdPtBi, Nat. Mater. 15(11), 1161 (2016) https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat4684
33	D. T. Son and B. Z. Spivak, Chiral anomaly and classical negative magnetoresistance of Weyl metals, Phys. Rev. B 88(10), 104412 (2013) https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.88.104412
34	A. A. Burkov, Negative longitudinal magnetoresistance in Dirac and Weyl metals, Phys. Rev. B 91(24), 245157 (2015) https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.91.245157
35	B. Z. Spivak and A. V. Andreev, Magneto-transport phenomena related to the chiral anomaly in Weyl semimetals, Phys. Rev. B 93(8), 085107 (2016) https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.93.085107
36	J. S. Hu, T. F. Rosenbaum, and J. B. Betts, Current jets, disorder, and linear magnetoresistance in the silver chalcogenides, Phys. Rev. Lett. 95(18), 186603 (2005) https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.95.186603
37	J. S. Hu, M. M. Parish, and T. F. Rosenbaum, Nonsaturating magnetoresistance of inhomogeneous conductors: Comparison of experiment and simulation, Phys. Rev. B 75(21), 214203 (2007) https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.75.214203
38	R. D. dos Reis, M. O. Ajeesh, N. Kumar, F. Arnold, C. Shekhar, M. Naumann, M. Schmidt, M. Nicklas, and E. Hassinger, On the search for the chiral anomaly in Weyl semimetals: The negative longitudinal magnetoresistance, arXiv: 1606.03389 (2016)
39	C. L. Zhang, S. Y. Xu, I. Belopolski, Z. Yuan, Z. Lin, B. Tong, G. Bian, N. Alidoust, C. C. Lee, S. M. Huang, T. R. Chang, G. Chang, C. H. Hsu, H. T. Jeng, M. Neupane, D. S. Sanchez, H. Zheng, J. Wang, H. Lin, C. Zhang, H. Z. Lu, S. Q. Shen, T. Neupert, M. Z. Hasan, and S. Jia, Signatures of the Adler–Bell–Jackiw chiral anomaly in a Weyl fermion semimetal, Nat. Commun. 7, 10735 (2016) https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms10735
40	T. Besara, D. A. Rhodes, K. W. Chen, S. Das, Q. R. Zhang, J. F. Sun, B. Zeng, Y. Xin, L. Balicas, R. E. Baumbach, E. Manousakis, D. J. Singh, and T. Siegrist, Coexistence of Weyl physics and planar defects in semimetals TaP and TaAs, Phys. Rev. B 93, 245152 (2016), arXiv: 1606.05178
41	J. Jiang, F. Tang, X. C. Pan, H. M. Liu, X. H. Niu, Y. X. Wang, D. F. Xu, H. F. Yang, B. P. Xie, F. Q. Song, P. Dudin, T. K. Kim, M. Hoesch, P. K. Das, I. Vobornik, X. G. Wan, and D. L. Feng, Signature of strong spin-orbital coupling in the large nonsaturating magnetoresistance material WTe2, Phys. Rev. Lett. 115(16), 166601 (2015) https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.115.166601
42	K. Y. Bliokh, Weak antilocalization of ultrarelativistic fermions, Phys. Lett. A 344(2–4), 127 (2005) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physleta.2005.06.062
43	S. Hikami, A. I. Larkin, and Y. Nagaoka, Spinorbital interaction and magnetoresistance in the twodimensional random system, Prog. Theor. Phys. 63(2), 707 (1980) https://doi.org/10.1143/PTP.63.707
44	H. Wang, H. Liu, C. Z. Chang, H. Zuo, Y. Zhao, Y. Sun, Z. Xia, K. He, X. Ma, X. C. Xie, Q. K. Xue, and J. Wang, Crossover between weak antilocalization and weak localization of bulk states in ultrathin Bi2Se3 films, Sci. Rep. 4, 5817 (2014) https://doi.org/10.1038/srep05817
45	C. J. Lin, X. Y. He, J. Liao, X. X. Wang, V. Sacksteder IV, W. M. Yang, T. Guan, Q. M. Zhang, L. Gu, G. Y. Zhang, C. G. Zeng, X. Dai, K. H. Wu, and Y. Q. Li, Parallel field magnetoresistance in topological insulator thin films, Phys. Rev. B 88, 041307(R) (2013)
46	A. Kawabata, Theory of negative magnetoresistance i. application to heavily doped semiconductors, J. Phys. Soc. Jpn. 49(2), 628 (1980) https://doi.org/10.1143/JPSJ.49.628
47	Y. Kopelevich, J. H. S. Torres, R. R. da Silva, F. Mrowka, H. Kempa, and P. Esquinazi, Reentrant metallic behavior of graphite in the quantum limit, Phys. Rev. Lett. 90(15), 156402 (2003) https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.90.156402
48	B. Fauqué, B. Vignolle, C. Proust, J. P. Issi, and K. Behnia, Electronic instability in bismuth far beyond the quantum limit, New J. Phys. 11(11), 113012 (2009) https://doi.org/10.1088/1367-2630/11/11/113012
49	Y. P. Li, Z. Wang, Y. H. Lu, X. J. Yang, Z. X. Shen, F. Sheng, C. Feng, Y. Zheng, and Z.-A. Xu, Negative magnetoresistance in topological semimetals of transitionmetal dipnictides with non-trivial Z2 indices, arXiv: 1603.04056 (2016)
50	B. Shen, X. Y. Deng, G. Kotliar, and N. Ni, Fermi surface topology and negative longitudinal magnetoresistance observed in centrosymmetric NbAs2 semimetal, arXiv: 1602.01795 (2016)
51	Y. K. Luo, R. D. McDonald, P. F. S. Rosa, B. Scott, N. Wakeham, N. J. Ghimire, E. D. Bauer, J. D. Thompson, and F. Ronning, Anomalous magnetoresistance in TaAs2, arXiv: 1601.05524 (2016)
52	Z. Wang, Y. P. Li, Y. H. Lu, Z. X. Shen, F. Sheng, C. M. Feng, Y. Zheng, and Z. A. Xu, Topological phase transition induced extreme magnetoresistance in TaSb2, arXiv: 1603.01717 (2016)
53	V. K. Dugaev and D. E. Khmelnitskii, Magnetoresistance of metal films with low impurity concentration in a parallel magnetic field, Sov. Phys. JETP 59, 1038 (1984)
54	A. K. Mitchell and L. Fritz, Kondo effect in threedimensional Dirac and Weyl systems, Phys. Rev. B 92, 121109(R) (2015)

Viewed

Full text

Abstract

Cited

Shared

Discussed