Magnetism and anomalous transport in the Weyl semimetal PrAlGe: possible route to axial gauge fields
Source abstract
Abstract
Abstract In magnetic Weyl semimetals, where magnetism breaks time-reversal symmetry, large magnetically sensitive anomalous transport responses are anticipated that could be useful for topological spintronics. The identification of new magnetic Weyl semimetals is therefore in high demand, particularly since in these systems Weyl node configurations may be easily modified using magnetic fields. Here we explore experimentally the magnetic semimetal PrAlGe, and unveil a direct correspondence between easy-axis Pr ferromagnetism and anomalous Hall and Nernst effects. With sizes of both the anomalous Hall conductivity and Nernst effect in good quantitative agreement with first principles calculations, we identify PrAlGe as a system where magnetic fields can connect directly to Weyl nodes via the Pr magnetisation. Furthermore, we find the predominantly easy-axis ferromagnetic ground state co-exists with a low density of nanoscale textured magnetic domain walls. We describe how such nanoscale magnetic textures could serve as a local platform for tunable axial gauge fields of Weyl fermions.
Source: crossref · Quality: baseline
Research context
OpenAlex topics: Topological Materials and Phenomena · Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates · Graphene research and applications
SciVX discovery tags are terminology-based. OpenAlex topics are source-provided classifications.
References (67)
Show source-provided references
1. Bansil, A., Lin, H. & Das, T. Topological band theory. Rev. Mod. Phys. 88, 021004 (2016).10.1103/RevModPhys.88.021004 ↗
2. Armitage, N. P., Mele, E. J. & Vishwanath, A. Weyl and Dirac semimetals in three-dimensional solids. Rev. Mod. Phys. 90, 015001 (2018).10.1103/RevModPhys.90.015001 ↗
3. Huang, X. et al. Observation of the chiral-anomaly-induced negative magnetoresistance in 3D Weyl semimetal TaAs. Phys. Rev. X 5, 031023 (2015).
4. Suzuki, T. et al. Large anomalous Hall effect in a half-Heusler antiferromagnet. Nat. Phys. 12, 1119–1123 (2016).10.1038/nphys3831 ↗
5. Liu, E. et al. Giant anomalous Hall effect in a ferromagnetic kagome-lattice semimetal. Nat. Phys. 14, 1125–1131 (2018).10.1038/s41567-018-0234-5 ↗
6. Tokura, Y., Kawasaki, M. & Nagaosa, N. Emergent functions of quantum materials. Nat. Phys. 13, 1056–1058 (2017).10.1038/nphys4274 ↗
7. Kuroda, K. et al. Evidence for magnetic Weyl fermions in a correlated metal. Nat. Mater. 16, 1090–1095 (2017).10.1038/nmat4987 ↗
8. Nakatsuji, S., Kiyohara, N. & Higo, T. Large anomalous Hall effect in a non-collinear antiferromagnet at room temperature. Nature 527, 212–215 (2015).10.1038/nature15723 ↗
9. Kim, K. et al. Large anomalous Hall current induced by topological nodal lines in a ferromagnetic van der Waals semimetal. Nat. Mater. 17, 794–799 (2018).10.1038/s41563-018-0132-3 ↗
10. Sakai, A. et al. Giant anomalous Nernst effect and quantum-critical scaling in a ferromagnetic semimetal. Nat. Phys. 14, 1119–1124 (2018).10.1038/s41567-018-0225-6 ↗
11. Guin, S. N. et al. Anomalous Nernst effect beyond the magnetization scaling relation in the ferromagnetic Heusler compound Co2MnGa. NPG Asia Mater. 11, 16 (2019).10.1038/s41427-019-0116-z ↗
12. Chang, G. et al. Magnetic and noncentrosymmetric Weyl fermion semimetals in the RAlGe family of compounds (R = rare earth). Phys. Rev. B 97, 041104 (2018).10.1103/PhysRevB.97.041104 ↗
13. Hodovanets, H. et al. Single-crystal investigation of the proposed type-II Weyl semimetal CeAlGe. Phys. Rev. B 98, 245132 (2018).10.1103/PhysRevB.98.245132 ↗
14. Xu, S.-Y. et al. Discovery of Lorentz-violating type II Weyl fermions in LaAlGe. Sci. Adv. 3, e1603266 (2017).
15. Gebhardt, W. & Krey, G. Phasenübergänge Und Kritische Phänomene (Vieweg, Braunschweig, 1980).
16. Puphal, P. et al. Bulk single-crystal growth of the theoretically predicted magnetic Weyl semimetals RAlGe (R = Pr, Ce). Phys. Rev. Phys. Rev. Mater. 3, 024204 (2019).10.1103/PhysRevMaterials.3.024204 ↗
17. Mydosh, J. A. Spin glasses: redux: an updated experimental/materials survey. Rep. Prog. Phys. 78, 052501 (2015).10.1088/0034-4885/78/5/052501 ↗
18. Mydosh, J. A. Spin Glasses An Experimental Introduction (Taylor & Francis, London, 1993).
19. Ryan, D. H. Recent Progress in Random Magnets (World Scientific, 1992).10.1142/1585 ↗
20. Hennion, M., Mirebeau, I., Hennion, B., Lequien, S. & Hippert, F. Magnetic structure observed in an applied field in two kinds of re-entrant spin glasses. Europhys. Lett. 2, 393–399 (1986).10.1209/0295-5075/2/5/008 ↗
21. Behnia, K. The Nernst effect and the boundaries of the Fermi liquid picture. J. Phys. Condens. Matter 21, 113101 (2009).10.1088/0953-8984/21/11/113101 ↗
22. Behnia, K. & Aubin, H. Nernst effect in metals and superconductors: a review of concepts and experiments. Rep. Prog. Phys. 79, 046502 (2016).10.1088/0034-4885/79/4/046502 ↗
23. Onose, Y., Li, L., Petrovic, C. & Ong, N. P. Anomalous thermopower and Nernst effect in CeColn5: loss of entropy current in precursor state. Europhys. Lett. 79, 17006 (2007).10.1209/0295-5075/79/17006 ↗
24. Shiomi, Y., Kanazawa, N., Shibata, K., Onose, Y. & Tokura, Y. Topological Nernst effect in a three-dimensional skyrmion-lattice phase. Phys. Rev. B 88, 064409 (2013).10.1103/PhysRevB.88.064409 ↗
25. Boucher, B., Chieux, P., Convert, P. & Tournarie, M. Small-angle neutron scattering determination of medium and long range order in the amorphous metallic alloy TbCu3.54. J. Phys. F Met. Phys. 13, 1339–1357 (1983).10.1088/0305-4608/13/7/006 ↗
26. Schmidt, P. W. Modern Aspects of Small-Angle Scattering (Kluwer Academic, 1995)
27. Krimmel, A. et al. Spin-glass behavior in PrAu2Si2. Phys. Rev. B 59, R6604–R6607 (1999).10.1103/PhysRevB.59.R6604 ↗
28. Goremychkin, E. A. et al. Spin-glass order induced by dynamic frustration. Nat. Phys. 4, 766–770 (2008).10.1038/nphys1028 ↗
29. Anand, V. K., Adroja, D. T. & Hillier, A. D. Ferromagnetic cluster spin-glass behavior in PrRhSn3. Phys. Rev. B 85, 014418 (2012).10.1103/PhysRevB.85.014418 ↗
30. Anand, V. K. et al. Magnetic and transport properties of Pr2Pt3Si5. J. Magn. Magn. Mater. 324, 2483–2487 (2012).10.1016/j.jmmm.2012.03.016 ↗
31. Nagaosa, N., Sinova, J., Onoda, S., MacDonald, A. H. & Ong, N. P. Anomalous Hall effect. Rev. Mod. Phys. 82, 1539–1592 (2010).10.1103/RevModPhys.82.1539 ↗
32. Ye, L. et al. Massive Dirac fermions in a ferromagnetic kagome metal. Nature 555, 638–642 (2018).10.1038/nature25987 ↗
33. Chang, G. et al. Topological Hopf and chain link semimetal states and their application to Co2MnGa. Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 156401 (2017).10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.156401 ↗
34. Belopolski, I. et al. Discovery of topological Weyl fermion lines and drumhead surface states in a room temperature magnet. Science 365, 1278–1281 (2019).10.1126/science.aav2327 ↗
35. Xiao, D., Yao, Y., Fang, Z. & Niu, Q. Berry-phase effect in anomalous thermoelectric transport. Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 026603 (2006).10.1103/PhysRevLett.97.026603 ↗
36. Ilan, R., Grushin, A. G. & Pikulin, D. I. Pseudo-electromagnetic fields in topological semimetals. Nat. Rev. Phys. https://www.nature.com/articles/s42254-019-0121-8 (2019).
37. Gomes, K. K., Mar, W., Ko, W., Guinea, F. & Manoharan, H. C. Designer Dirac fermions and topological phases in molecular graphene. Nature 483, 306–310 (2012).10.1038/nature10941 ↗
38. Peri, V., Serra-Garcia, M., Ilan, R. & Huber, S. D. Axial-field-induced chiral channels in an acoustic Weyl system. Nat. Phys. 15, 357–361 (2019).10.1038/s41567-019-0415-x ↗
39. Jia, H. et al. Observation of chiral zero mode in inhomogeneous three-dimensional Weyl metamaterials. Science 363, 148–151 (2019).10.1126/science.aau7707 ↗
40. Levy, N. et al. Strain-induced pseudo–magnetic fields greater than 300 tesla in graphene nanobubbles. Science 329, 544–547 (2010).10.1126/science.1191700 ↗
41. Grushin, A. G., Venderbos, J. W., Vishwanath, A. & Ilan, R. Inhomogeneous Weyl and Dirac semimetals: transport in axial magnetic fields and Fermi arc surface states from pseudo-Landau levels. Phys. Rev. X 6, 041046 (2016).
42. Cortijo, A., Ferreirós, Y., Landsteiner, K. & Vozmediano, M. A. Elastic gauge fields in Weyl semimetals. Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 177202 (2015).10.1103/PhysRevLett.115.177202 ↗
43. Pikulin, D., Chen, A. & Franz, M. Chiral anomaly from strain-induced gauge fields in Dirac and Weyl semimetals. Phys. Rev. X 6, 041021 (2016).
44. Soluyanov, A. A. et al. Type-II Weyl semimetals. Nature 527, 495–498 (2015).10.1038/nature15768 ↗
45. Zyuzin, A. A. & Tiwari, R. P. Intrinsic anomalous Hall effect in type-II Weyl semimetals. JETP Lett. 103, 717–722 (2016).10.1134/S002136401611014X ↗
46. Ghimire, M. P. et al. Creating Weyl nodes and controlling their energy by magnetization rotation. Phy. Rev. Res. 1, 032044 (2019).10.1103/PhysRevResearch.1.032044 ↗
47. Hübener, H., Sentef, M. A., De Giovannini, U., Kemper, A. F. & Rubio, A. Creating stable Floquet-Weyl semimetals by laser-driving of 3D Dirac materials. Nat. Commun. 8, 13940 (2017).10.1038/ncomms13940 ↗
48. Menon, A., Chowdhury, D. & Basu, B. Photoinduced tunable anomalous Hall and Nernst effects in tilted Weyl semimetals using Floquet theory. Phys. Rev. B 98, 205109 (2018).10.1103/PhysRevB.98.205109 ↗
49. Zhou, Y. et al. Pressure-induced new topological Weyl semimetal phase in TaAs. Phys. Rev. Lett. 117, 146402 (2016).10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.146402 ↗
50. Meng, B. et al. Large anomalous Hall effect in ferromagnetic Weyl semimetal candidate PrAlGe. APL. Materials 7, 051110 (2019).
51. Rodríguez-Carvajal, J. Recent advances in magnetic structure determination by neutron powder diffraction. Phys. B 192, 55–69 (1993).10.1016/0921-4526(93)90108-I ↗
52. Dewhurst, C. D., GRASP User Manual. Technical Report No. ILL03DE01T, Institut Laue- Langevin, Grenoble (2003), available at: www.ill.fr/lss/grasp.
53. Breßler, I., Kohlbrecher, J. & Thünemann, A. F. SASfit: a tool for small-angle scattering data analysis using a library of analytical expressions. J. Appl. Cryst. 48, 1587–1598 (2015).10.1107/S1600576715016544 ↗
54. Cyr-Choinière, O. et al. Enhancement of the Nernst effect by stripe order in a high-Tc superconductor. Nature 458, 743–745 (2009).10.1038/nature07931 ↗
55. Kresse, G. & Hafner, J. Ab initio molecular dynamics for open-shell transition metals. Phys. Rev. B 48, 13115–13118 (1993).10.1103/PhysRevB.48.13115 ↗
56. Kresse, G. & Furthmüller, J. Efficiency of ab-initio total energy calculations for metals and semiconductors using a plane-wave basis set. Comput. Mater. Sci. 6, 15–50 (1996).10.1016/0927-0256(96)00008-0 ↗
57. Perdew, J. P., Burke, K. & Ernzerhof, M. Generalized gradient approximation made simple. Phys. Rev. Lett. 77, 3865–3868 (1996).10.1103/PhysRevLett.77.3865 ↗
58. Blöchl, P. E. Projector augmented-wave method. Phys. Rev. B 50, 17953–17979 (1994).10.1103/PhysRevB.50.17953 ↗
59. Kresse, G. & Joubert, D. From ultrasoft pseudopotentials to the projector augmented-wave method. Phys. Rev. B 59, 1758–1775 (1999).10.1103/PhysRevB.59.1758 ↗
60. Marzari, N., Mostofi, A. A., Yates, J. R., Souza, I. & Vanderbilt, D. Maximally localized Wannier functions: theory and applications. Rev. Mod. Phys. 84, 1419–1475 (2012).10.1103/RevModPhys.84.1419 ↗
61. Mostofi, A. A. et al. wannier90: A tool for obtaining maximally-localised Wannier functions. Comput. Phys. Commun. 178, 685–699 (2008).10.1016/j.cpc.2007.11.016 ↗
62. Mostofi, A. A. et al. An updated version of wannier90: a tool for obtaining maximally-localised Wannier functions. Comput. Phys. Commun. 185, 2309–2310 (2014).10.1016/j.cpc.2014.05.003 ↗
63. Pizzi, G. et al. Wannier90 as a community code: new features and applications. J. Phys. Condens. Matter. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1361-648×/ab51ff/meta (2019)10.1088/1361-648X/ab51ff ↗
64. Souza, I., Marzari, N. & Vanderbilt, D. Maximally localized Wannier functions for entangled energy bands. Phys. Rev. B 65, 035109 (2001).10.1103/PhysRevB.65.035109 ↗
65. Wang, X., Yates, J. R., Souza, I. & Vanderbilt, D. Ab initio calculation of the anomalous Hall conductivity by Wannier interpolation. Phys. Rev. B 74, 195118 (2006).10.1103/PhysRevB.74.195118 ↗
66. Gladyshevskii, E. I., Nakonechna, N. Z., Cenzual, K., Gladyshevskii, R. E. & Jorda, J.-L. Crystal structures of PrAlxGe2−x compounds. J. Alloy. Compd. 296, 265–271 (2000).10.1016/S0925-8388(99)00539-3 ↗
67. Momma, K. & Izumi, F. VESTA3 for three-dimensional visualization of crystal, volumetric and morphology data. J. Appl. Crystallogr. 44, 1272–1276 (2011).10.1107/S0021889811038970 ↗