Publication Date:
2013-08-31
Description:
In topological crystalline insulators (TCIs), topology and crystal symmetry intertwine to create surface states with distinct characteristics. The breaking of crystal symmetry in TCIs is predicted to impart mass to the massless Dirac fermions. Here, we report high-resolution scanning tunneling microscopy studies of a TCI, Pb(1-x)Sn(x)Se that reveal the coexistence of zero-mass Dirac fermions protected by crystal symmetry with massive Dirac fermions consistent with crystal symmetry breaking. In addition, we show two distinct regimes of the Fermi surface topology separated by a Van-Hove singularity at the Lifshitz transition point. Our work paves the way for engineering the Dirac band gap and realizing interaction-driven topological quantum phenomena in TCIs.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Okada, Yoshinori -- Serbyn, Maksym -- Lin, Hsin -- Walkup, Daniel -- Zhou, Wenwen -- Dhital, Chetan -- Neupane, Madhab -- Xu, Suyang -- Wang, Yung Jui -- Sankar, R -- Chou, Fangcheng -- Bansil, Arun -- Hasan, M Zahid -- Wilson, Stephen D -- Fu, Liang -- Madhavan, Vidya -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2013 Sep 27;341(6153):1496-9. doi: 10.1126/science.1239451. Epub 2013 Aug 29.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Physics, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467, USA.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23989954" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
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Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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