Non-trivial surface states of samarium hexaboride at the (111) surface

Yoshiyuki Ohtsubo (), Yuki Yamashita, Kenta Hagiwara, Shin-ichiro Ideta, Kiyohisa Tanaka, Ryu Yukawa, Koji Horiba, Hiroshi Kumigashira, Koji Miyamoto, Taichi Okuda, Wataru Hirano, Fumitoshi Iga and Shin-ichi Kimura ()
Additional contact information
Yoshiyuki Ohtsubo: Osaka University
Yuki Yamashita: Osaka University
Kenta Hagiwara: Osaka University
Shin-ichiro Ideta: Institute for Molecular Science
Kiyohisa Tanaka: Institute for Molecular Science
Ryu Yukawa: High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK)
Koji Horiba: High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK)
Hiroshi Kumigashira: High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK)
Koji Miyamoto: Hiroshima University
Taichi Okuda: Hiroshima University
Wataru Hirano: Ibaraki University
Fumitoshi Iga: Ibaraki University
Shin-ichi Kimura: Osaka University

Nature Communications, 2019, vol. 10, issue 1, 1-7

Abstract: Abstract The peculiar metallic electronic states observed in the Kondo insulator, samarium hexaboride (SmB6), has stimulated considerable attention among those studying non-trivial electronic phenomena. However, experimental studies of these states have led to controversial conclusions mainly due to the difficulty and inhomogeneity of the SmB6 crystal surface. Here, we show the detailed electronic structure of SmB6 with angle-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy measurements of the three-fold (111) surface where only two inequivalent time-reversal-invariant momenta (TRIM) exist. We observe the metallic two-dimensional state was dispersed across the bulk Kondo gap. Its helical in-plane spin polarisation around the surface TRIM indicates that SmB6 is topologically non-trivial, according to the topological classification theory for weakly correlated systems. Based on these results, we propose a simple picture of the controversial topological classification of SmB6.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-10353-3 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:10:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-019-10353-3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-10353-3

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().