Signatures of the Adler–Bell–Jackiw chiral anomaly in a Weyl fermion semimetal

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms10735

Authors: Cheng-long Zhang (International Center for Quantum Materials, School of Physics, Peking University) , Su-yang Xu (Laboratory for Topological Quantum Matter and Spectroscopy (B7), Department of Physics, Princeton University) , Ilya Belopolski (Princeton University) , Zhujun Yuan (International Center for Quantum Materials, School of Physics, Peking University) , Ziquan Lin (Wuhan National High Magnetic Field Center, Huazhong University of Science and Technology) , Bingbing Tong (International Center for Quantum Materials, School of Physics, Peking University) , Guang Bian (Princeton University) , Nasser Alidoust (Princeton University) , Chi-cheng Lee (Centre for Advanced 2D Materials and Graphene Research Centre, National University of Singapore) , Shin-ming Huang (Centre for Advanced 2D Materials and Graphene Research Centre, National University of Singapore) , Tay-rong Chang (Laboratory for Topological Quantum Matter and Spectroscopy (B7), Department of Physics, Princeton University) , Guoqing Chang (Centre for Advanced 2D Materials and Graphene Research Centre, National University of Singapore) , Chuang-han Hsu (Centre for Advanced 2D Materials and Graphene Research Centre, National University of Singapore) , Horng-tay Jeng (Department of Physics, National Tsing Hua University) , Madhab Neupane (Princeton University) , Daniel Sanchez (Princeton University) , Hao Zheng (Laboratory for Topological Quantum Matter and Spectroscopy (B7), Department of Physics, Princeton University) , Junfeng Wang (Wuhan National High Magnetic Field Center, Huazhong University of Science and Technology) , Hsin Lin (Centre for Advanced 2D Materials and Graphene Research Centre, National University of Singapore) , Chi Zhang (International Center for Quantum Materials, School of Physics, Peking University) , Hai-zhou Lu (Department of Physics, South University of Science and Technology of China) , Shun-qing Shen (Department of Physics, The University of Hong Kong) , Titus Neupert (Princeton Center for Theoretical Science, Princeton University) , M. Zahid Hasan (Laboratory for Topological Quantum Matter and Spectroscopy (B7), Department of Physics, Princeton University) , Shuang Jia (International Center for Quantum Materials, School of Physics, Peking University)
Co-authored by industrial partner: No

Type: Journal Paper
Journal: Nature Communications , VOL 7

State: Published (Approved)
Published: February 2016

Abstract: Weyl semimetals provide the realization of Weyl fermions in solid-state physics. Among all the physical phenomena that are enabled by Weyl semimetals, the chiral anomaly is the most unusual one. Here, we report signatures of the chiral anomaly in the magneto-transport measurements on the first Weyl semimetal TaAs. We show negative magnetoresistance under parallel electric and magnetic fields, that is, unlike most metals whose resistivity increases under an external magnetic field, we observe that our high mobility TaAs samples become more conductive as a magnetic field is applied along the direction of the current for certain ranges of the field strength. We present systematically detailed data and careful analyses, which allow us to exclude other possible origins of the observed negative magnetoresistance. Our transport data, corroborated by photoemission measurements, first-principles calculations and theoretical analyses, collectively demonstrate signatures of the Weyl fermion chiral anomaly in the magneto-transport of TaAs.

Subject Areas: Physics


Instruments: I05-ARPES

Other Facilities: Advanced Light Source; Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource; Swiss Light Source

Added On: 15/11/2016 14:30

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ncomms10735.pdf

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