Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rice University, Houston, TX 77005;
Rice Center for Quantum Materials, Rice University, Houston, TX 77005.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2018 Jan 2;115(1):93-97. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1715851115. Epub 2017 Dec 18.
Insulating states can be topologically nontrivial, a well-established notion that is exemplified by the quantum Hall effect and topological insulators. By contrast, topological metals have not been experimentally evidenced until recently. In systems with strong correlations, they have yet to be identified. Heavy-fermion semimetals are a prototype of strongly correlated systems and, given their strong spin-orbit coupling, present a natural setting to make progress. Here, we advance a Weyl-Kondo semimetal phase in a periodic Anderson model on a noncentrosymmetric lattice. The quasiparticles near the Weyl nodes develop out of the Kondo effect, as do the surface states that feature Fermi arcs. We determine the key signatures of this phase, which are realized in the heavy-fermion semimetal CeBiPd Our findings provide the much-needed theoretical foundation for the experimental search of topological metals with strong correlations and open up an avenue for systematic studies of such quantum phases that naturally entangle multiple degrees of freedom.
绝缘态可能具有非平凡的拓扑性质,这是一个已被广泛认可的概念,其例证包括量子霍尔效应和拓扑绝缘体。相比之下,拓扑金属直到最近才在实验中得到证实。在强关联系统中,它们尚未被识别。重费米子半金属是强关联系统的原型,由于其强自旋轨道耦合,为取得进展提供了自然的环境。在这里,我们在非中心对称晶格上的周期性安德森模型中提出了一个外尔-康多半金属相。近 Weyl 节点的准粒子是由康多效应产生的,表面态也具有费米弧。我们确定了这个相的关键特征,这些特征在重费米子半金属 CeBiPd 中得到了实现。我们的研究结果为具有强关联的拓扑金属的实验研究提供了急需的理论基础,并为研究这些自然纠缠多个自由度的量子相开辟了途径。