Abstract
In topological quantum materials1,2,3 the conduction and valence bands are connected at points or along lines in the momentum space. A number of studies have demonstrated that several materials are indeed Dirac/Weyl semimetals4,5,6,7,8. However, there is still no experimental confirmation of materials with line nodes, in which the Dirac nodes form closed loops in the momentum space2,3. Here we report the discovery of a novel topological structure—Dirac node arcs—in the ultrahigh magnetoresistive material PtSn4 using laser-based angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy data and density functional theory calculations. Unlike the closed loops of line nodes, the Dirac node arc structure arises owing to the surface states and resembles the Dirac dispersion in graphene that is extended along a short line in the momentum space. We propose that this reported Dirac node arc structure is a novel topological state that provides an exciting platform for studying the exotic properties of Dirac fermions.
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Change history
07 April 2016
In the version of this Letter originally published a note about colour figures was mistakenly included in all of the figure captions. These notes have now been removed in all versions of the Letter.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Science and Engineering Division. Ames Laboratory is operated for the US Department of Energy by Iowa State University under contract No. DE-AC02-07CH11358.
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P.C.C. initiated the work by insisting that Y.W. and A.K. design and carry out the experiment. Y.W., D.M. and L.H. acquired and analysed ARPES data. L.-L.W., D.D.J. and Y.L. carried out the DFT calculations. E.M. grew the samples under the supervision of S.L.B. and P.C.C. The manuscript was drafted by Y.W. and A.K. All authors discussed and commented on the manuscript.
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Wu, Y., Wang, LL., Mun, E. et al. Dirac node arcs in PtSn4. Nature Phys 12, 667–671 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys3712
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys3712
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