Inversion and time-reversal symmetry broken Weyl semimetal

Speaker
Prof. Halyna Hodovanets, Missouri S&T
Host
Guang Bian
-
Zoom Seminar

Weyl semimetals are among the materials proposed to have significant potential in informational technologies and to harbor the necessary elements for quantum computing. They host Weyl nodes at specific points in their Brillouin zone, a pair of relativistic fermions with different chirality, Weyl fermions. The nontrivial momentum-space topology due to the Weyl nodes leads to various fascinating phenomena, such as the chiral anomaly, chiral magnetic effect, anomalous magnetoresistance and Hall effect, large nonsaturating thermoelectric power and ultrafast photocurrents just to name a few. The essential ingredients for the realization of the Weyl semimetal are the absence of inversion symmetry and/or time-reversal symmetry. The RAlX (where R=Rare Earth and X=Ge, Si) family, where both symmetries are broken, has been recently identified as a large class of Weyl semimetal based on systematic first-principles band structure calculations and APRES measurements. In this respect, I will present details and importance of crystal growth of non-centrosymmetric CeAlGe single crystals, their physical properties, anomalous magnetotransport, and discuss the future implications of our findings and the tunability of RAlGe and RAlSi families.