Topological semimetals with helicoid surface states

By Chen Fang, Ling Lu, Junwei Liu, Liang Fu. Nature Physics, 2015

176 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We show that the surface dispersions of topological semimetals map to helicoidal structures, where the bulk nodal points project to the branch points of the helicoids whose equal-energy contours are Fermi arcs. This mapping is demonstrated in the recently discovered Weyl semimetals and leads us to predict new types of topological semimetals, whose surface states are represented by double- and quad-helicoid surfaces. Each helicoid or multi-helicoid is shown to be the non-compact Riemann surface representing a multi-valued holomorphic function (generating function). The intersection of multiple helicoids, or the branch cut of the generating function, appears on high-symmetry lines in the surface Brillouin zone, where surface states are guaranteed to be doubly degenerate by a glide reflection symmetry. We predict the heterostructure superlattice [(SrIrO3)2(CaIrO3)2] to be a topological semimetal with double-helicoid surface states. A detailed theoretical and numerical study demonstrates a connection between the electronic structure of topological semimetals and Riemann surfaces.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Condensed Matter Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d8fb0a0aa83c48fff70cb2b1c8fd7d8d322d44c2

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

In Condensed Matter Physics

Citations in the corpus

Angle-resolved photoemission studies of quantum materials (2020, unknown): “…drumhead surface states in line-node semimetals (Belopolski et al., 2019; Burkov et al., 2011) and helicoid surface bands in chiral semimetals (Fang et al., 2016; Sanchez et al., 2019; Schröter et al., 2019), among others, continue to be experimentally investigated, with ARPES playing the…”
Experimental realization of a Weyl exceptional ring (2018, background): “[30] Chen Fang, Ling Lu, Junwei Liu, and Liang Fu, “Topological semimetals with helicoid surface states,” Nat.”
Weyl and Dirac semimetals in three-dimensional solids (2017, methodology): “A review of materials candidates is contained in (Fang et al., 2016; Yu et al., 2017).”