Observation of gapped state in rare-earth monopnictide HoSb

• Published in: Scientific reports Vol. 10; no. 1; p. 12961
• Main Authors: Hosen, M. Mofazzel, Dhakal, Gyanendra, Wang, Baokai, Poudel, Narayan, Singh, Bahadur, Dimitri, Klauss, Kabir, Firoza, Sims, Christopher, Regmi, Sabin, Neff, William, Sarkar, Anan Bari, Agarwal, Amit, Murray, Daniel, Weickert, Franziska, Gofryk, Krzysztof, Pavlosiuk, Orest, Wiśniewski, Piotr, Kaczorowski, Dariusz, Bansil, Arun, Neupane, Madhab
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 31-07-2020; Nature Publishing Group
• Subjects: 639/301; 639/766; CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND SUPERFLUIDITY; Crystal structure; Energy; Humanities and Social Sciences; Laboratories; multidisciplinary; Physics; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Spectroscopy; Spectrum analysis; Symmetry; topological systems
• ISSN: 2045-2322; 2045-2322
• DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-69414-z

The rare-earth monopnictide family is attracting an intense current interest driven by its unusual extreme magnetoresistance (XMR) property and the potential presence of topologically non-trivial surface states. The experimental observation of non-trivial surface states in this family of materials are not ubiquitous. Here, using high-resolution angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, magnetotransport, and parallel first-principles modeling, we examine the nature of electronic states in HoSb. Although we find the presence of bulk band gaps at the
Γ
and
X
-symmetry points of the Brillouin zone, we do not find these gaps to exhibit band inversion so that HoSb does not host a Dirac semimetal state. Our magnetotransport measurements indicate that HoSb can be characterized as a correlated nearly-complete electron-hole-compensated semimetal. Our analysis reveals that the nearly perfect electron-hole compensation could drive the appearance of non-saturating XMR effect in HoSb.