2015/10/25 by B. Q. Lv, S. Muff, T. Qian +15
Physics and Astronomy · #cond-mat.mtrl-sci #cond-mat.mes-hall
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.115.217601
published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 217601 (2015) · 4 figures, acceptance for publication in PRL, see also related papers arXiv:1501.00060, arXiv:1502.04684, arXiv:1503.09188
arxiv created 2015/10/25 · arxiv updated 2015/11/25
We have investigated the spin texture of surface Fermi arcs in the recently discovered Weyl semimetal TaAs using spin- and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy. The experimental results demonstrate that the Fermi arcs are spin-polarized. The measured spin texture fulfills the requirement of mirror and time reversal symmetries and is well reproduced by our first-principles calculations, which gives strong evidence for the topologically nontrivial Weyl semimetal state in TaAs. The consistency between the experimental and calculated results further confirms the distribution of chirality of the Weyl nodes determined by first-principles calculations.