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Low-temperature surface conduction in the Kondo insulator SmB$_6$

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 نشر من قبل Steven Wolgast
 تاريخ النشر 2012
  مجال البحث فيزياء
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We study the transport properties of the Kondo insulator SmB$_6$ with a specialized configuration designed to distinguish bulk-dominated conduction from surface-dominated conduction. We find that as the material is cooled below 4 K, it exhibits a crossover from bulk to surface conduction with a fully insulating bulk. We take the robustness and magnitude of the surface conductivity, as is manifest in the literature of SmB$_6$, to be strong evidence for the topological insulator metallic surface states recently predicted for this material.

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