Distinct Electronic Structure for the Extreme Magnetoresistance in YSb

Junfeng He, Chaofan Zhang, Nirmal J. Ghimire, Tian Liang, Chunjing Jia, Juan Jiang, Shujie Tang, Sudi Chen, Yu He, S.-K. Mo, C. C. Hwang, M. Hashimoto, D. H. Lu, B. Moritz, T. P. Devereaux, Y. L. Chen, J. F. Mitchell, and Z.-X. Shen

Phys. Rev. Lett. 117, 267201 – Published 23 December 2016

Abstract

An extreme magnetoresistance (XMR) has recently been observed in several nonmagnetic semimetals. Increasing experimental and theoretical evidence indicates that the XMR can be driven by either topological protection or electron-hole compensation. Here, by investigating the electronic structure of a XMR material, YSb, we present spectroscopic evidence for a special case which lacks topological protection and perfect electron-hole compensation. Further investigations reveal that a cooperative action of a substantial difference between electron and hole mobility and a moderate carrier compensation might contribute to the XMR in YSb.

Received 26 July 2016

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.267201

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Electronic structure Magnetotransport

Single crystal materials

Angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy Density functional theory

Condensed Matter, Materials & Applied Physics

Authors & Affiliations

Junfeng He^1,2, Chaofan Zhang^1,2, Nirmal J. Ghimire³, Tian Liang^1,2, Chunjing Jia^1,2, Juan Jiang^4,5,6, Shujie Tang^1,2, Sudi Chen^1,2, Yu He^1,2, S.-K. Mo⁴, C. C. Hwang⁶, M. Hashimoto⁷, D. H. Lu⁷, B. Moritz^1,2, T. P. Devereaux^1,2, Y. L. Chen^5,8, J. F. Mitchell³, and Z.-X. Shen^1,2,*

¹Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, 2575 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park, California 94025, USA
²Geballe Laboratory for Advanced Materials, Departments of Physics and Applied Physics, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA
³Materials Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, Illinois 60439, USA
⁴Advanced Light Source, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA
⁵School of Physical Science and Technology, ShanghaiTech University, Shanghai 200031, People’s Republic of China
⁶Pohang Accelerator Laboratory, Pohang University of Science and Technology, Pohang 790-784, Korea
⁷Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, 2575 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park, California 94025, USA
⁸Physics Department, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3PU, United Kingdom

^*To whom correspondence should be addressed. zxshen@stanford.edu

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Vol. 117, Iss. 26 — 23 December 2016

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Images

Figure 1
Fermi surface and band structure of YSb. (a),(b) Calculated band structure along $X − Γ − X$ and $W − X − W$ . The holelike and electronlike bands are plotted in black and red, respectively. There are two holelike bands ( $α$ , $β$ ) and one electronlike band ( $γ$ ) crossing the Fermi level. Dashed lines indicate selected folded bands (FB) from the calculation. The calculated chemical potential has been shifted up by 50 meV to fit the experiment. (c) Calculated Fermi surface shown in the 3D FCC Brillouin zone. (d),(e) Photoemission intensity plot of the band structure along $X − Γ − X$ and $W − X − W$ probed with the photon energy of 53 and 90 eV, respectively. Various bands are guided by the dashed lines. A weak holelike band feature (marked as B4) is also seen in (e) whose band top locates at $\sim 300 meV$ below the Fermi level. (f) Symmetrized Fermi surface mapping in the $K_{x} − K_{y}$ plane at the zone center ( $K_{z} = 0$ , probed with 53 eV photons). (g) Fermi surface mapping in the $K_{x} − K_{y}$ plane at the zone boundary [top surface of the 3D Brillouin zone in (c), probed with 90 eV photons].
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Figure 2
Detailed band evolution near the Fermi pockets. (a) Momentum second derivative band structure near the electron and hole pockets in the $K_{x} − K_{y}$ plane at $K_{z} = 0$ , measured from cut 1 (top-left panel) to cut 12 (bottom-right panel). The black and red dashed lines in the top-right panel show schematically the holelike bands ( $α$ , $β$ ) and electronlike band ( $γ$ ), respectively. The pink and yellow dashed lines mark the additional bands near $Γ$ . The location of the momentum cuts are shown in (b). (c) Band evolution (momentum second derivative images) near the electronlike pocket around $X$ , measured in the $K_{x} − K_{z}$ plane at $K_{y} = 0$ from momentum cut 13 to cut 18 in (d).
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Figure 3
Electron and hole Fermi pockets in YSb. (a),(b) Fermi surface of the $α$ and $β$ hole pockets in the $K_{x} − K_{y}$ plane at $K_{z} = 0$ , extracted from Fig. 2. Two spheres with different radii are used to estimate the volume of each hole pocket, whose projection on the same $K_{x} − K_{y}$ plane is shown by the green and blue dashed lines, respectively. (c) Fermi surface of the $γ$ electron pocket in the $K_{x} − K_{z}$ plane at $K_{y} = 0$ , extracted from Fig. 2. The blue dashed line shows schematically the projection of an ellipsoid on the same $K_{x} − K_{z}$ plane, which is used to estimate the volume of the $γ$ pocket. Error bars reflect the uncertainty in determining the Fermi momenta.
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Figure 4
The cooperative action of a moderate carrier compensation and a substantial difference between electron and hole mobility. (a) Simulated MR driven by perfect carrier compensation ( $n_{e} = n_{h}$ , red curve). The same carrier mobility [ $μ_{e} = μ_{h} = 5 \times 10^{4} {cm}^{2} {(V s)}^{- 1}$ ] is used for the simulation. The black dashed curve represents the real MR measured by experiments. (b) Simulated MR when the carrier concentration deviates from perfect compensation [ $n_{e} / n_{h} = 0.81$ , $μ_{e}$ and $μ_{h}$ are the same as those in (a)]. (c) Simulated MR using $n_{e} / n_{h} = 0.81$ , but with $μ_{e} = 9 \times 10^{5}$ and $μ_{h} = 3.5 \times 10^{3} {cm}^{2} {(V s)}^{- 1}$ .
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