Observation of Topological Crystalline Insulator phase in the lead tin chalcogenide Pb1-xSnxTe material class


Abstract in English

We perform systematic angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopic measurements on the lead tin telluride Pb1-xSnxTe pseudobinary alloy system. We show that the (001) crystalline surface, which is a crystalline surface symmetric about the (110) mirror planes of the Pb1-xSnxTe crystal, pos- sesses four metallic surface states within its surface Brillouin zone. Our systematic Fermi surface and band topology measurements show that the observed Dirac-like surface states lie on the symmetric momentum-space cuts. We further show that upon going to higher electron binding energies, the surface states isoenergetic countours in close vicinity of each X point are observed to hybridize with each other, leading to a Fermi surface fractionalization and the Lifshitz transition. In addition, systematic incident photon energy dependent measurements are performed, which enable us to un- ambiguously identify the surface states from the bulk bands. These systematic measurements of the surface and bulk electronic structure on Pb1-xSnxTe, supported by our first principles calculation results, for the first time, show that the Pb1-xSnxTe system belongs to the topological crystalline insulator phase due to the four band

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