Fermi surface of the Weyl type-II metallic candidate WP2

• Published in: arXiv.org
• Main Authors: Schönemann, R, Aryal, N, Zhou, Q, Y -C Chiu, K -W Chen, Martin, T J, McCandless, G T, Chan, J Y, Manousakis, E, Balicas, L
• Format: Paper Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Ithaca Cornell University Library, arXiv.org 03.07.2017
• Subjects: Dependence; Electrical resistivity; Fermi surfaces; Fermions; First principles; Physics - Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics; Residual resistivity
• ISSN: 2331-8422
• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.1706.10135

Weyl type-II fermions are massless quasiparticles that obey the Weyl equation and which are predicted to occur at the boundary between electron- and hole-pockets in certain semi-metals, i.e. the (W,Mo)(Te,P)\(_2\) compounds. Here, we present a study of the Fermi-surface of WP\(_2\) \emph{via} the Shubnikov-de Haas (SdH) effect. Compared to other semi-metals WP\(_2\) exhibits a very low residual resistivity, i.e. \(\rho_0 \simeq 10\) n\(\Omega\)cm, which leads to perhaps the largest non-saturating magneto-resistivity \((\rho(H))\) reported for any compound. For the samples displaying the smallest \(\rho_0\), \(\rho(H)\) is observed to increase by a factor of \(2.5 \times 10^{7}\) \(\%\) under \(\mu_{0}H = 35\) T at \(T = 0.35\) K. The angular dependence of the SdH frequencies is found to be in very good agreement with the first-principle calculations when the electron- and hole-bands are slightly shifted with respect to the Fermi level, thus supporting the existence of underlying Weyl type-II points in WP\(_2\).