Evidence for massive bulk Dirac Fermions in Pb${}_{1-x}$Sn${}_x$Se from Nernst and thermopower experiments

Abstract

The lead chalcogenides (Pb,Sn)Te and (Pb,Sn)Se are the first examples of topological crystalline insulators (TCI) predicted \cite{Fu,Hsieh} (and confirmed \cite{Hasan,Story,Takahashi}) to display topological surface Dirac states (SDS) that are protected by mirror symmetry. A starting premise \cite{Hsieh} is that the SDS arise from bulk states describable as massive Dirac states \cite{Wallis,Svane}, but this assumption is untested. Here we show that the thermoelectric response of the bulk states display features specific to the Dirac spectrum. We show that, in the quantum limit, the lowest Landau Level (LL) is singly spin-degenerate, whereas higher levels are doubly degenerate. The abrupt change in spin degeneracy leads to a large step-decrease in the thermopower $S_{xx}$. In the lowest LL, $S_{xx}$ displays a striking linear increase vs. magnetic field. In addition, the Nernst signal undergoes an anomalous sign change when the bulk gap inverts at 180 K.

16 pages, 8 figures

References in corpus (6)

• Topological Crystalline Insulators
• Thermoelectric and Magnetothermoelectric Transport Measurements of Graphene
• The thermopower and Nernst Effect in graphene in a magnetic field
• Oscillating Nernst-Ettingshausen effect in Bismuth across the quantum limit
• Signatures of surface states in bismuth at high magnetic fields
• Observation of Topological Crystalline Insulator phase in the lead tin chalcogenide Pb1-xSnxTe material class

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