Transport signatures of surface states in a Weyl semimetal: evidence of field driven Fermi arc interferometry

Kavli Affiliate: Jeffrey Neaton

| First 5 Authors: Nityan L. Nair, Marie-Eve Boulanger, Francis Laliberté, Sinead Griffin, Sanyum Channa

| Summary:

A signature property of Weyl semimetals is the existence of topologically
protected surface states – arcs in momentum space that connect Weyl points in
the bulk. However, the presence of bulks states makes detection of surface
contributions to the transport challenging. Here we present a magnetoresistance
study of high-quality samples of the prototypical Weyl semimetal, TaAs. By
measuring the Shubnikov de Haas effect, we reveal the presence of a
two-dimensional cyclotron orbit. This orbit is quantitatively consistent with
the interference of coherent quasiparticles traversing two distinct Fermi arcs
on the [001] crystallographic surface. The observation of this effect suggests
that high magnetic fields can be used to study not only the transport
properties of Fermi arcs, but also the interference of their quantum mechanical
wavefunctions.

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