Discovery of the first Weyl fermion semimetal and topological Fermi arcs in TaAs

POSTER

Abstract

Weyl semimetals have opened a new era in condensed matter physics and materials science. They host Weyl fermions as emergent quasiparticles and admit a topological classification that protects Fermi arc surface states on the boundary. This unusual electronic structure has deep analogies with particle physics and leads to unique topological properties. We report the experimental discovery of the first Weyl semimetal, TaAs. We directly observe the Weyl fermions and the Fermi arcs in a TaAs single crystal and demonstrate its topological character. Our work opens the field for studying of Weyl fermions in table-top experiments.

*The work at Princeton and Princeton-led ARPES measurements were supported by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundations EPiQS Ini- tiative through grant GBMF4547 (Hasan) and by U.S. Department of Energy DE-FG-02-05ER46200.

Authors

  • Su-Yang Xu

    • Princeton University
    • Princeton Univ
  • Ilya Belopolski

    • Princeton University
  • Nasser Alidoust

    • Princeton University
  • Madhab Neupane

    • Princeton University
    • Los Alamos National Laboratory
    • Department of Physics, University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida 32816, USA
  • Guang Bian

    • Princeton University
  • Chenglong Zhang

    • Peking University
  • Raman Sankar

    • National Taiwan University
  • Guoqing Chang

    • National University of Singapore
  • Zhujun Yuan

    • Peking University
  • Chi-Cheng Lee

    • National University of Singapore
  • Shin-Ming Huang

    • National University of Singapore
  • Hao Zheng

    • deparement of Physics, Princeton University
    • Princeton University
  • Jie Ma

    • Princeton University
    • Oak Ridge National Laboratory
  • Daniel Sanchez

    • Princeton University
  • BaoKai Wang

    • Northeastern University
  • Arun Bansil

    • Northeastern Univ
    • Northeastern University
  • Fangcheng Chou

    • National Taiwan University
  • Pavel Shibayev

    • Princeton University
  • Hsin Lin

    • National University of Singapore
    • National University of Signapore
  • Shuang Jia

    • Peking University
  • M. Zahid Hasan

    • Princeton University
    • Princeton Univ