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

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms10735

Authors: Cheng-Long Zhang (Peking University) , Su-Yang Xu (Princeton University) , Ilya Belopolski (Princeton University) , Zhujun Yuan (Peking University) , Ziquan Lin (Huazhong University of Science and Technology) , Bingbing Tong (Peking University) , Guang Bian (Princeton University) , Nasser Alidoust (Princeton University) , Chi-Cheng Lee (National University of Singapore) , Shin-Ming Huang (National University of Singapore) , Tay-Rong Chang (Princeton University) , Guoqing Chang (National University of Singapore) , Chuang-Han Hsu (National University of Singapore) , Horng-Tay Jeng (National Tsing Hua University) , Madhab Neupane (Princeton University) , Daniel Sanchez (Princeton University) , Hao Zheng (Princeton University) , Junfeng Wang (Huazhong University of Science and Technology) , Hsin Lin (National University of Singapore) , Chi Zhang (Peking University) , Hai-Zhou Lu (South University of Science and Technology of China) , Shun-Qing Shen (The University of Hong Kong) , Titus Neupert (Princeton University) , M. Zahid Hasan (Princeton University) , Shuang Jia (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.

Journal Keywords: Condensed-matter physics; Theoretical physics

Subject Areas: Physics, Materials


Instruments: I05-ARPES

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

Added On: 15/11/2016 14:30

Documents:
ncomms10735.pdf

Discipline Tags:

Quantum Materials Physics Hard condensed matter - structures Magnetism Materials Science Theoretical Physics

Technical Tags:

Spectroscopy Angle Resolved Photoemission Spectroscopy (ARPES)