Abstract
, a well-known Kondo insulator, has been proposed to be an ideal topological insulator with states of topological character located in a clean, bulk electronic gap, namely, the Kondo-hybridization gap. Since the Kondo gap arises from many-body electronic correlations, would be placed at the head of a new material class: topological Kondo insulators. Here, for the first time, we show that the -space characteristics of the Kondo-hybridization process is the key to unraveling the origin of the two types of metallic states experimentally observed by angle-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy (ARPES) in the electronic band structure of . One group of these states is essentially of bulk origin and cuts the Fermi level due to the position of the chemical potential 20 meV above the lowest-lying hybridization zone. The other metallic state is more enigmatic, being weak in intensity, but represents a good candidate for a topological surface state. However, before this claim can be substantiated by an unequivocal measurement of its massless dispersion relation, our data raise the bar in terms of the ARPES resolution required, as we show there to be a strong renormalization of the hybridization gaps by a factor 2–3 compared to theory, following from the knowledge of the true position of the chemical potential and a careful comparison with the predictions from recent local-density-approximation calculations. All in all, these key pieces of evidence act as triangulation markers, providing a detailed description of the electronic landscape in and pointing the way for future, ultrahigh-resolution ARPES experiments to achieve a direct measurement of the Dirac cones in the first topological Kondo insulator.
- Received 12 August 2013
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.3.041024
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Published by the American Physical Society
Popular Summary
For the past 40 years, has presented the condensed-matter-physics community with a scientific puzzle. This material is thought to be an archetypal Kondo insulator, whose electrical resistivity should diverge as its temperature approaches zero. , however, defies this expectation. While its electrical resistivity indeed rises sharply as it is cooled below 50 K, the rise ends at a finite value of resistivity at lower temperatures. Recently, theoreticians have proposed a new solution for this old mystery: that the Kondo behavior coexists with the existence of additional conducting states hosted by the surfaces of the crystal that possess special topological properties. If these theoretical predictions can be verified experimentally, will become the first in a new material class: topological Kondo insulators. Experiments are still scarce, however. In this experimental paper, we add significant weight to the experimental side of the research effort by providing detailed measurements on the electronic structure of and identifying the origins of different electronic states relevant to the puzzling behavior of .
In a Kondo insulator, the interaction between localized and itinerant electrons, known as the Kondo-hybridization interaction, is responsible for the insulating behavior. This interaction is reflected in the material’s electronic band structure. Our experiments employ angle-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy (ARPES), the most direct tool to access the electronic band structure of complex materials and to shed light on the topological character of electronic states. The technique is based on the photoelectric effect: a photon-in–electron-out experiment where measurements of the kinetic energy and the emission angle of the outgoing photoelectrons are translated via conservation laws into their energy vs momentum relation within the material, namely, the electronic band structure. Using high-quality, floating-zone-grown crystals, we have shown for the first time that the Kondo-hybridization interaction is the key to unraveling the origins of two observed types of metallic states in the material’s electronic structure. One type of these states is related to the bulk electronic structure, while the other indeed represents a good candidate for topological surface states.
Our findings provide an important part of the puzzle that has been missing until now: a state-of-the-art, direct measurement of the electronic landscape in this material. Such a detailed map of the relevant electronic states points the way forward for future work on this first candidate topological Kondo insulator.