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Nonsymmorphic symmetry-protected band crossings in a square-net metal PtPb4
Abstract Topological semimetals with symmetry-protected band crossings have emerged as a rich landscape to explore intriguing electronic phenomena. Nonsymmorphic symmetries in particular have been shown to play an important role in protecting the crossings along a line (rather than a point) in momentum space. Here we report experimental and theoretical evidence for Dirac nodal line crossings along the Brillouin zone boundaries in PtPb 4 , arising from the nonsymmorphic symmetry of its crystal structure. Interestingly, while the nodal lines would remain gapless in the absence of spin–orbit coupling (SOC), the SOC, in this case, plays a detrimental role to topology by lifting the band degeneracy everywhere except at a set of isolated points. Nevertheless, the nodal line is observed to have a bandwidth much smaller than that found in density functional theory (DFT). Our findings reveal PtPb 4 to be a material system with narrow crossings approximately protected by nonsymmorphic crystalline symmetries.
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Award ID(s):
Publication Date:
NSF-PAR ID:
10323673
Journal Name:
npj Quantum Materials
Volume:
7
Issue:
1
ISSN:
2397-4648
1. Abstract Most topological insulators (TIs) discovered today in spinful systems can be transformed from topological semimetals (TSMs) with vanishing bulk gap via introducing the spin-orbit coupling (SOC), which manifests the intrinsic links between the gapped topological insulator phases and the gapless TSMs. Recently, we have discovered a family of TSMs in time-reversal invariant spinless systems, which host butterfly-like nodal-lines (NLs) consisting of a pair of identical concentric intersecting coplanar ellipses (CICE). In this Communication, we unveil the intrinsic link between this exotic class of nodal-line semimetals (NLSMs) and a $${{\mathbb{Z}}}_{4}$$ Z 4 = 2 topological crystalline insulator (TCI), by including substantial SOC. We demonstrate that in three space groups (i.e., P b a m (No.55), P 4/ m b m (No.127), and P 4 2 / m b c (No.135)), the TCI supports a fourfold Dirac fermion on the (001) surface protected by two glide symmetries, which originates from the intertwined drumhead surface states of the CICE NLs. The higher order topology is further demonstrated by the emergence of one-dimensional helical hinge states, indicating the discovery of a higher order topological insulator protected by a glide symmetry.