Quantum limit transport and destruction of the Weyl nodes in TaAs

B. J. Ramshaw (), K. A. Modic, Arkady Shekhter, Yi Zhang, Eun-Ah Kim, Philip J. W. Moll, Maja D. Bachmann, M. K. Chan, J. B. Betts, F. Balakirev, A. Migliori, N. J. Ghimire, E. D. Bauer, F. Ronning and R. D. McDonald
Additional contact information
B. J. Ramshaw: Cornell University
K. A. Modic: Max-Planck-Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids
Arkady Shekhter: National High Magnetic Field Laboratory
Yi Zhang: Cornell University
Eun-Ah Kim: Cornell University
Philip J. W. Moll: Max-Planck-Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids
Maja D. Bachmann: Max-Planck-Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids
M. K. Chan: Los Alamos National Laboratory
J. B. Betts: Los Alamos National Laboratory
F. Balakirev: Los Alamos National Laboratory
A. Migliori: Los Alamos National Laboratory
N. J. Ghimire: Los Alamos National Laboratory
E. D. Bauer: Los Alamos National Laboratory
F. Ronning: Los Alamos National Laboratory
R. D. McDonald: Los Alamos National Laboratory

Nature Communications, 2018, vol. 9, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract Weyl fermions are a recently discovered ingredient for correlated states of electronic matter. A key difficulty has been that real materials also contain non-Weyl quasiparticles, and disentangling the experimental signatures has proven challenging. Here we use magnetic fields up to 95 T to drive the Weyl semimetal TaAs far into its quantum limit, where only the purely chiral 0th Landau levels of the Weyl fermions are occupied. We find the electrical resistivity to be nearly independent of magnetic field up to 50 T: unusual for conventional metals but consistent with the chiral anomaly for Weyl fermions. Above 50 T we observe a two-order-of-magnitude increase in resistivity, indicating that a gap opens in the chiral Landau levels. Above 80 T we observe strong ultrasonic attenuation below 2 K, suggesting a mesoscopically textured state of matter. These results point the way to inducing new correlated states of matter in the quantum limit of Weyl semimetals.

Date: 2018
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-04542-9

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