No Arabic abstract
Drumhead surface states that link together loops of nodal lines arise in Dirac nodal-line semimetals as a consequence of the topologically non-trivial band crossings. We used low-temperature scanning tunneling microscopy and Fourier-transformed scanning tunneling spectroscopy to investigate the quasiparticle interference (QPI) properties of ZrSiTe. Our results show two scattering signals across the drumhead state resolving the energy-momentum relationship through the occupied and unoccupied energy ranges it is predicted to span. Observation of this drumhead state is in contrast to previous studies on ZrSiS and ZrSiSe, where the QPI was dominated by topologically trivial bulk bands and surface states. Furthermore, we observe a near $mathbf{k} rightarrow -mathbf{k}$ scattering process across the $Gamma$-point, enabled by scattering between the spin-split drumhead bands in this material.
The discovery of topological insulators (TIs), materials with bulk band gaps and protected cross-gap surface states, in compounds such as Bi2Se3 has generated much interest in identifying topological surface states (TSSs) in other classes of materials. In particular, recent theory calculations suggest that TSSs may be found in half-Heusler ternary compounds. If experimentally realizable, this would provide a materials platform for entirely new heterostructure spintronic devices that make use of the structurally-identical but electronically-varied nature of Heusler compounds. Here, we show the presence of a TSS in epitaxially grown thin films of the half-Heusler compound PtLuSb. Spin and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES), complemented by theoretical calculations, reveals a surface state with linear dispersion and a helical tangential spin texture consistent with previous predictions. This experimental verification of TI behavior is a significant step forward in establishing half-Heusler compounds as a viable material system for future spintronics devices.
We consider a two-orbital tight-binding model defined on a layered three-dimensional hexagonal lattice to investigate the properties of topological nodal lines and their associated drumhead surface states. We examine these surface states in centrosymmetric systems, where the bulk nodal lines are of Dirac type (i.e., four-fold degenerate), as well as in non-centrosymmetric systems with strong Rashba and/or Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling, where the bulk nodal lines are of Weyl type (i.e., two-fold degenerate). We find that in non-centrosymmetric systems the nodal lines and their corresponding drumhead surface states are fully spin polarized due to spin-orbit coupling. We show that unique signatures of the topologically nontrivial drumhead surface states can be measured by means of quasiparticle scattering interference, which we compute for both Dirac and Weyl nodal line semimetals. At the end, we analyze the possible crystal structures with a symmetry that supports flat surface states which are effectively ringlike.
We study the electronic structure of the nodal line semimetal ZrSiTe both experimentally and theoretically. We find two different surface states in ZrSiTe - topological drumhead surface states and trivial floating band surface states. Using the spectra of Wilson loops, we show that a non-trivial Berry phase that exists in a confined region within the Brillouin Zone gives rise to the topological drumhead-type surface states. The $mathbb{Z}_2$ structure of the Berry phase induces a $mathbb{Z}_2$ modular arithmetic of the surface states, allowing surface states deriving from different nodal lines to hybridize and gap out, which can be probed by a set of Wilson loops. Our findings are confirmed by textit{ab-initio} calculations and angle-resolved photoemission experiments, which are in excellent agreement with each other and the topological analysis. This is the first complete characterization of topological surface states in the family of square-net based nodal line semimetals and thus fundamentally increases the understanding of the topological nature of this growing class of topological semimetals.
We report angle-resolved photoemission experiments resolving the distinct electronic structure of the inequivalent top and bottom (001) surfaces of WTe2. On both surfaces, we identify a surface state that forms a large Fermi-arc emerging out of the bulk electron pocket. Using surface electronic structure calculations, we show that these Fermi arcs are topologically trivial and that their existence is independent of the presence of type-II Weyl points in the bulk band structure. This implies that the observation of surface Fermi arcs alone does not allow the identification of WTe2 as a topological Weyl semimetal. We further use the identification of the two different surfaces to clarify the number of Fermi surface sheets in WTe2.
The symmetry-indicators provide valuable information about the topological properties of band structures in real materials. For inversion-symmetric, non-magnetic materials, the pattern of parity eigenvalues of various Kramers-degenerate bands at the time-reversal-invariant momentum points are generally analyzed with the combination of strong $Z_4$, and weak $Z_2$ indices. Can the symmetry indicators identify the tunneling configurations of SU(2) Berry connections or the three-dimensional, winding numbers of topologically non-trivial bands? In this work, we perform detailed analytical and numerical calculations on various effective tight-binding models to answer this question. If the parity eigenvalues are regarded as fictitious Ising spins, located at the vertices of Miller hypercube, the strong $Z_4$ index describes the net ferro-magnetic moment, which is shown to be inadequate for identifying non-trivial bands, supporting even integer winding numbers. We demonstrate that an anti-ferromagnetic index, measuring the staggered magnetization can distinguish between bands possessing zero, odd, and even integer winding numbers. The coarse-grained analysis of symmetry-indicators is substantiated by computing the change in rotational-symmetry-protected, quantized Berry flux and Wilson loops along various high-symmetry axes. By simultaneously computing ferromagnetic and anti-ferromagnetic indices, we categorize various bands of bismuth, antimony, rhombohedral phosphorus, and Bi$_2$Se$_3$.