Shadow surface states in topological Kondo insulators

The surface states of 3D topological insulators in general have negligible quantum oscillations when the chemical potential is tuned to the Dirac points. In contrast, we find that topological Kondo insulators can support surface states with an arbitrarily large Fermi surfaces when the chemical potential is pinned to the Dirac point. We illustrate that these Fermi surfaces give rise to finite-frequency quantum oscillations, which can become comparable to the extremal area of the unhybridized bulk bands. We show that this occurs when the crystal symmetry is lowered from cubic to tetragonal in a minimal two-orbital model. We label such surface modes as `shadow surface states'. Moreover, we show that the sufficient NNN out-of-plane hybridization leading to shadow surface states can be self-consistently stabilized for tetragonal topological Kondo insulators. Consequently, shadow surface states provide an important example of high-frequency quantum oscillations beyond the context of cubic topological Kondo insulators.

Topological Lifshitz Transition and Novel Edge States Induced by Non-Abelian SU(2) Gauge Field on Bilayer Honeycomb Lattice

We investigate the SU(2) gauge effects on bilayer honeycomb lattice thoroughly. We discover a topological Lifshitz transition induced by the non-Abelian gauge potential. Topological Lifshitz transitions are determined by topologies of Fermi surfaces in the momentum space. Fermi surface consists of N = 8 Dirac points at π-flux point instead of N = 4 in the trivial Abelian regimes. A local winding number is defined to classify the universality class of the gapless excitations. We also obtain the phase diagram of gauge fluxes by solving the secular equation. Furthermore, the novel edge states of biased bilayer nanoribbon with gauge fluxes are also investigated.

Band-selective gap opening by a C4-symmetric order in a proximity-coupled heterostructure Sr2VO3FeAs

Complex electronic phases in strongly correlated electron systems are manifested by broken symmetries in the low-energy electronic states. Some mysterious phases, however, exhibit intriguing energy gap opening without an apparent signature of symmetry breaking (e.g., high-TC cuprates and heavy fermion superconductors). Here, we report an unconventional gap opening in a heterostructured, iron-based superconductor Sr2VO3FeAs across a phase transition at T0 ∼150 K. Using angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, we identify that a fully isotropic gap opens selectively on one of the Fermi surfaces with finite warping along the interlayer direction. This band selectivity is incompatible with conventional gap opening mechanisms associated with symmetry breaking. These findings, together with the unusual field-dependent magnetoresistance, suggest that the Kondo-type proximity coupling of itinerant Fe electrons to localized V spin plays a role in stabilizing the exotic phase, which may serve as a distinct precursor state for unconventional superconductivity.

Low-symmetry nonlocal transport in microstructured squares of delafossite metals

Intense work studying the ballistic regime of electron transport in two-dimensional systems based on semiconductors and graphene had been thought to have established most of the key experimental facts of the field. In recent years, however, additional forms of ballistic transport have become accessible in the quasi–two-dimensional delafossite metals, whose Fermi wavelength is a factor of 100 shorter than those typically studied in the previous work and whose Fermi surfaces are nearly hexagonal in shape and therefore strongly faceted. This has some profound consequences for results obtained from the classic ballistic transport experiment of studying bend and Hall resistances in mesoscopic squares fabricated from delafossite single crystals. We observe pronounced anisotropies in bend resistances and even a Hall voltage that is strongly asymmetric in magnetic field. Although some of our observations are nonintuitive at first sight, we show that they can be understood within a nonlocal Landauer-Büttiker analysis tailored to the symmetries of the square/hexagonal geometries of our combined device/Fermi surface system. Signatures of nonlocal transport can be resolved for squares of linear dimension of nearly 100 µm, approximately a factor of 15 larger than the bulk mean free path of the crystal from which the device was fabricated.

Quasi-one-dimensional superconductivity in the pressurized charge-density-wave conductor HfTe3

HfTe3 single crystal undergoes a charge-density-wave (CDW) transition at TCDW = 93 K without the appearance of superconductivity (SC) down to 50 mK at ambient pressure. Here, we determined its CDW vector q = 0.91(1) a* + 0.27(1) c* via low-temperature transmission electron microscope and then performed comprehensive high-pressure transport measurements along three major crystallographic axes. Our results indicate that the superconducting pairing starts to occur within the quasi-one-dimensional (Q1D) -Te2-Te3- chain at 4–5 K but the phase coherence between the superconducting chains cannot be realized along either the b- or c-axis down to at least 1.4 K, giving rise to an extremely anisotropic SC rarely seen in real materials. We have discussed the prominent Q1D SC in pressurized HfTe3 in terms of the anisotropic Fermi surfaces arising from the unidirectional Te-5px electronic states and the local pairs formed along the -Te2-Te3- chains based on the first-principles electronic structure calculations.