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Measurement of the electronic structure of a type-II topological Dirac semimetal candidate VAl3 using angle-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy

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Abstract

Type-II topological Dirac semimetals are topological quantum materials hosting Lorentz-symmetry breaking type-II Dirac fermions, which are tilted Dirac cones with various exotic physical properties, such as anisotropic chiral anomalies and novel quantum oscillations. Until now, only limited material systems have been confirmed by theory and experiments with the type-II Dirac fermions. Here, we investigated the electronic structure of a new type-II Dirac semimetal VAl3 with angle-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy. The measured band dispersions are consistent with the theoretical prediction, which suggests the Dirac points are located close to (at about 100 meV above) the Fermi level. Our work demonstrates a new type-II Dirac semimetal candidate system with different Dirac node configurations and application potentials.

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Fig. 1

d and e Reproduced with permission from Ref. [46] Copyright 2017 American Physical Society. f VAl3 core-level spectrum, obtained with hν = 200 eV

Fig. 2

Reproduced with permission from Ref. [47] Copyright 2018 American Physical Society

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Acknowledgements

This research used resources of the Diamond Light Source, and other two Angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy beamlines: Advanced Light Source, a United States Department of Energy Office of Science User Facility under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231 and ‘Dreamline’ beamline of the Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility. This work was sponsored by the National Key R&D Program of China (Grant No. 2017YFA0305400), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 11674229), Shanghai Municipal Science and Technology Major Project (Grant No. 2018SHZDZX02).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Physical Science and Technology, ShanghaiTech University, Shanghai, 201210, China

    Hong-Wei Fang, Ai-Ji Liang, Zhong-Kai Liu & Yu-Lin Chen

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Hong-Wei Fang

  3. ShanghaiTech Laboratory for Topological Physics, ShanghaiTech University, Shanghai, 201210, China

    Ai-Ji Liang, Zhong-Kai Liu & Yu-Lin Chen

  4. Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics, Halle, 06120, Germany

    Niels B. M. Schröter

  5. National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230029, China

    Sheng-Tao Cui

  6. Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX1 3PU, United Kingdom

    Yu-Lin Chen

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The original online version of this article was revised: In this article Sheng-Tao Cui and Yu-Lin Chen should also have been denoted as one of the corresponding authors. This article has three corresponding authors: Zhong-Kai Liu, Sheng-Tao Cui, and Yu-Lin Chen.

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Fang, HW., Liang, AJ., Schröter, N.B.M. et al. Measurement of the electronic structure of a type-II topological Dirac semimetal candidate VAl3 using angle-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy. Tungsten 5, 332–338 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42864-022-00141-w

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