2018/08/01 by Kent R. Shirer, Kent Shirer, Yan Sun +35 · 1 citation
Chemistry · Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #Inorganic Fluorides and Related Compounds #Rare-earth and actinide compounds #Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) #Superconducting Materials and Applications #Superconductivity (cond-mat.supr-con) #cond-mat.str-el #cond-mat.supr-con
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1808.00403
arxiv created 2018/08/01 · openalex publication_date 2018/08/01 · arxiv updated 2018/08/02 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The Ce(Co,Rh,Ir)In5 family of ``Ce-115'' materials hosts an abundance of correlated electron behavior, including heavy-fermion physics, magnetism, superconductivity and nematicity. The complicated behavior of these entangled phenomena leads to a variety of exotic physical properties, which, despite the seemingly simple crystal structure of these compounds, remain poorly understood. It is generally accepted that the interplay between the itinerant and local character of Ce-4f electrons is the key to their exotic behavior. Here, we report theoretical evidence that the Ce-115 materials are also topological semi-metals, with Dirac fermions around well-separated nodes. Dirac nodes in each compound are present on the Γ-Z plane close to the Fermi level. As the Dirac bands are derived from In-orbitals, they occur in all family members irrespective of the transition metal (Co,Rh,Ir). We present the expected Fermi-arc surface state patterns and show the close proximity of a topological Lifshitz transition, which possibly explains the high field physics of Ce-115 materials. Experimentally, we highlight the surprising similarity of Ce(Co,Rh,Ir)In5 in high magnetic fields, despite the distinctly different states of the Ce-4f electrons. These results raise questions about the role Dirac fermions play in exotic transport behavior, and we propose this class of materials as a prime candidate for unconventional topological superconductivity.