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Abstract While several magnetic topological semimetals have been discovered in recent years, their band structures are far from ideal, often obscured by trivial bands at the Fermi energy. Square‐net materials with clean, linearly dispersing bands show potential to circumvent this issue. CeSbTe, a square‐net material, features multiple magnetic‐field‐controllable topological phases. Here, it is shown that in this material, even higher degrees of tunability can be achieved by changing the electron count at the square‐net motif. Increased electron filling results in structural distortion and formation of charge density waves (CDWs). The modulation wave‐vector evolves continuously leading to a region of multiple discrete CDWs and a corresponding complex “Devil's staircase” magnetic ground state. A series of fractionally quantized magnetization plateaus is observed, which implies direct coupling between CDW and a collective spin‐excitation. It is further shown that the CDW creates a robust idealized nonsymmorphic Dirac semimetal, thus providing access to topological systems with rich magnetism.
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Band Engineering of Dirac Semimetals Using Charge Density Waves
Abstract New developments in the field of topological matter are often driven by materials discovery, including novel topological insulators, Dirac semimetals, and Weyl semimetals. In the last few years, large efforts have been made to classify all known inorganic materials with respect to their topology. Unfortunately, a large number of topological materials suffer from non‐ideal band structures. For example, topological bands are frequently convoluted with trivial ones, and band structure features of interest can appear far below the Fermi level. This leaves just a handful of materials that are intensively studied. Finding strategies to design new topological materials is a solution. Here, a new mechanism is introduced, which is based on charge density waves and non‐symmorphic symmetry, to design an idealized Dirac semimetal. It is then shown experimentally that the antiferromagnetic compound GdSb0.46Te1.48is a nearly ideal Dirac semimetal based on the proposed mechanism, meaning that most interfering bands at the Fermi level are suppressed. Its highly unusual transport behavior points to a thus far unknown regime, in which Dirac carriers with Fermi energy very close to the node seem to gradually localize in the presence of lattice and magnetic disorder.
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- PAR ID:
- 10449502
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley Blackwell (John Wiley & Sons)
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Advanced Materials
- Volume:
- 33
- Issue:
- 30
- ISSN:
- 0935-9648
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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