Experimental observation of Weyl points
Top Cited Papers
Open Access
- 7 August 2015
- journal article
- other
- Published by American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Science
- Vol. 349 (6248), 622-624
- https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaa9273
Abstract
Weyl physics emerges in the laboratory: Weyl fermions—massless particles with half-integer spin—were once mistakenly thought to describe neutrinos. Although not yet observed among elementary particles, Weyl fermions may exist as collective excitations in so-called Weyl semimetals. These materials have an unusual band structure in which the linearly dispersing valence and conduction bands meet at discrete “Weyl points.” Xu et al. used photoemission spectroscopy to identify TaAs as a Weyl semimetal capable of hosting Weyl fermions. In a complementary study, Lu et al. detected the characteristic Weyl points in a photonic crystal. The observation of Weyl physics may enable the discovery of exotic fundamental phenomena. Science , this issue p. 613 and 622Keywords
Funding Information
- U.S. Army Research Office
- U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering (DE-SC0010526)
- Materials Research Science and Engineering Center Program (DMR-1419807)
- MIT Solid-State Solar-Thermal Energy Conversion Center and Energy Frontier Research Center of DOE (DE-SC0001299)
- Chinese National Science Foundation (CNSF) (61401395, 61401393, 61131002)
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