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research article

Quasi-symmetry-protected topology in a semi-metal

Guo, Chunyu  
•
Hu, Lunhui
•
Putzke, Carsten  
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May 16, 2022
Nature Physics

The concept of quasi-symmetry-a perturbatively small deviation from exact symmetry-is introduced and leads to topological materials with strong resilience to perturbations.

The crystal symmetry of a material dictates the type of topological band structure it may host, and therefore, symmetry is the guiding principle to find topological materials. Here we introduce an alternative guiding principle, which we call 'quasi-symmetry'. This is the situation where a Hamiltonian has exact symmetry at a lower order that is broken by higher-order perturbation terms. This enforces finite but parametrically small gaps at some low-symmetry points in momentum space. Untethered from the restraints of symmetry, quasi-symmetries eliminate the need for fine tuning as they enforce that sources of large Berry curvature occur at arbitrary chemical potentials. We demonstrate that quasi-symmetry in the semi-metal CoSi stabilizes gaps below 2 meV over a large near-degenerate plane that can be measured in the quantum oscillation spectrum. The application of in-plane strain breaks the crystal symmetry and gaps the degenerate point, observable by new magnetic breakdown orbits. The quasi-symmetry, however, does not depend on spatial symmetries and hence transmission remains fully coherent. These results demonstrate a class of topological materials with increased resilience to perturbations such as strain-induced crystalline symmetry breaking, which may lead to robust topological applications as well as unexpected topology beyond the usual space group classifications.

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Type
research article
DOI
10.1038/s41567-022-01604-0
Web of Science ID

WOS:000796324300001

Author(s)
Guo, Chunyu  
Hu, Lunhui
Putzke, Carsten  
Diaz, Jonas  
Huang, Xiangwei  
Manna, Kaustuv
Fan, Feng-Ren
Shekhar, Chandra
Sun, Yan
Felser, Claudia
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Date Issued

2022-05-16

Publisher

NATURE PORTFOLIO

Published in
Nature Physics
Volume

18

Start page

813

End page

818

Subjects

Physics, Multidisciplinary

•

Physics

•

dirac semimetal

•

fermi-surface

•

chern-number

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superconductivity

•

transport

•

catalog

•

arc

Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
QMAT  
Available on Infoscience
June 6, 2022
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/188386
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