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Topological semimetal driven by strong correlations and crystalline symmetry

Nature Physics volume 18, pages 1341–1346 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

Electron correlations amplify quantum fluctuations and, as such, are recognized as the origin of many quantum phases. However, whether strong correlations can lead to gapless topological states is an outstanding question, in part because many of the ideas in topological condensed-matter physics rely on the analysis of an effectively non-interacting band structure. Therefore, a framework that allows the identification of strongly correlated topological materials is needed. Here we suggest a general approach in which strong correlations cooperate with crystalline symmetry to drive gapless topological states. We test this materials design principle by exploring Kondo lattice models and materials whose space-group symmetries promote different kinds of electronic degeneracies. This approach allows us to identify Weyl–Kondo nodal-line semimetals with nodes pinned to the Fermi energy, demonstrating that it can be applied to discover strongly correlated topological semimetals. We identify three heavy-fermion compounds as material candidates, provide direct experimental evidence for our prediction in Ce2Au3In5 and discuss how our approach may lead to many more. Our findings illustrate the potential of this materials design principle to guide the search for new topological metals in a broad range of strongly correlated systems.

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Fig. 1: Materials design principle and SG symmetry.
Fig. 2: Electronic structure in the absence of Kondo effect.
Fig. 3: Kondo-driven composite fermions of 3D-stacked square nets with broken inversion symmetry.
Fig. 4: Design of new materials for correlation-driven topological semimetal phases and the first synthesized material.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request. Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability

The computer codes that were used to generate the data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The work at Rice has been supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research under grant no. FA9550-21-1-0356 (C.S. and Q.S.), the National Science Foundation (NSF) under grant no. DMR-2220603 (L.C.) and the Robert A. Welch Foundation grant no. C-1411 (H.H.). The majority of the computational calculations have been performed on the Shared University Grid at Rice funded by NSF under grant EIA-0216467, a partnership between Rice University, Sun Microsystems and Sigma Solutions; the Big-Data Private-Cloud Research Cyberinfrastructure MRI award funded by NSF under grant no. CNS-1338099; and the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) by NSF under grant no. DMR170109. M.G.V. acknowledges support from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation grant no. PID2019-109905GB-C21 and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) GA 3314/1-1–FOR 5249 (QUAST). The work at Los Alamos was carried out under the auspices of the US Department of Energy (DOE) National Nuclear Security Administration under contract no. 89233218CNA000001, and was supported by LANL LDRD program. J.C. acknowledges support from the NSF under grant no. DMR-1942447 and support from the Flatiron Institute, a division of the Simons Foundation. The work in Vienna was supported by the Austrian Science Fund (project nos. 29279-N27 and I 5868-N–FOR 5249—QUAST). S.G., S.P., J.C. and Q.S. acknowledge the hospitality of the Aspen Center for Physics, which is supported by NSF grant no. PHY-1607611.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rice Center for Quantum Materials, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA

    Lei Chen, Chandan Setty, Haoyu Hu, Silke Paschen & Qimiao Si

  2. Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids, Dresden, Germany

    Maia G. Vergniory

  3. Donostia International Physics Center, Donostia-San Sebastian, Spain

    Maia G. Vergniory

  4. Theoretical Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, USA

    Sarah E. Grefe

  5. Institute of Solid State Physics, Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria

    Lukas Fischer, Xinlin Yan, Gaku Eguchi, Andrey Prokofiev & Silke Paschen

  6. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, USA

    Jennifer Cano

  7. Center for Computational Quantum Physics, Flatiron Institute, New York, NY, USA

    Jennifer Cano

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Contributions

Q.S., J.C. and S.P. conceived the research. L.C., C.S., H.H., S.E.G., J.C. and Q.S. carried out the theoretical model studies. A.P. and S.P. identified the candidate materials for the proposed correlated topological semimetals. L.F. and X.Y. synthesized the material and G.E. performed the specific-heat measurements. M.G.V. performed the DFT calculations. L.C., C.S., H.H., J.C. and Q.S. wrote the manuscript, with inputs from all the authors.

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Correspondence to Silke Paschen, Jennifer Cano or Qimiao Si.

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Nature Physics thanks Johann Kroha and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Chen, L., Setty, C., Hu, H. et al. Topological semimetal driven by strong correlations and crystalline symmetry. Nat. Phys. 18, 1341–1346 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-022-01743-4

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