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

doi:10.1007/s11467-016-0636-8

Front. Phys.

2017, Vol. 12

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

REVIEW ARTICLE

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

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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.

Keywords Weyl semimetals chiral anomaly negative magnetoresistance extrinsic effects

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

Issue Date: 19 December 2016

Cite this article:

Yupeng Li,Zhen Wang,Pengshan Li, et al. Negative magnetoresistance in Weyl semimetals NbAs and NbP: Intrinsic chiral anomaly and extrinsic effects[J]. Front. Phys. , 2017, 12(3): 127205.

URL:

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

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