Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Hlawenka, P.
• Siemensmeyer, K.
• Weschke, E.
• Varykhalov, A.
• Sánchez-Barriga, J.
• Shitsevalova, N. Y.
• Dukhnenko, A. V.
• Filipov, V. B.
• Gabáni, S.
• Flachbart, K.
• Rader, O.
• Rienks, E. D. L.

Titel

Samarium hexaboride is a trivial surface conductor

Ist Teil von

• Nature communications, 2018-02, Vol.9 (1), p.517-7, Article 517

Ort / Verlag

London: Nature Publishing Group UK

Erscheinungsjahr

2018

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• SmB 6 is predicted to be the first member of the intersection of topological insulators and Kondo insulators, strongly correlated materials in which the Fermi level lies in the gap of a many-body resonance that forms by hybridization between localized and itinerant states. While robust, surface-only conductivity at low temperature and the observation of surface states at the expected high symmetry points appear to confirm this prediction, we find both surface states at the (100) surface to be topologically trivial. We find the Γ ̄ state to appear Rashba split and explain the prominent X ̄ state by a surface shift of the many-body resonance. We propose that the latter mechanism, which applies to several crystal terminations, can explain the unusual surface conductivity. While additional, as yet unobserved topological surface states cannot be excluded, our results show that a firm connection between the two material classes is still outstanding. Samarium hexahoride is argued to be a topological Kondo insulator, but this claim remains under debate. Here, Hlawenka et al. provide a topologically trivial explanation for the conducting states at the (100) surface of samarium hexaboride; an explanation based on Rashba splitting and a surface shift of the Kondo resonance.