Bulk Fermi surface of charge-neutral excitations in SmB6 or not: a heat-transport study

Abstract

Recently there have been increasingly hot debates on whether a bulk Fermi surface of charge-neutral excitations exists in the topological Kondo insulator SmB6. To unambiguously resolve this issue, we performed the low-temperature thermal conductivity measurements of a high-quality SmB6 single crystal down to 0.1 K and up to 14.5 T. Our experiments show that the residual linear term of thermal conductivity at zero field is zero, within the experimental accuracy. Furthermore, the thermal conductivity is insensitive to magnetic field up to 14.5 T. These results exclude the existence of fermionic charge-neutral excitations in bulk SmB6, such as scalar Majorana fermions or spinons, thus put a strong constraint on the explanation of the quantum oscillations observed in SmB6.

arXiv comment5 pages, 3 figures

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Cited by in corpus (30)

• Fermi surface in the absence of a Fermi liquid in the Kondo insulator SmB${}_6$
• Excitons in topological Kondo insulators - theory of thermodynamic and transport anomalies in SmB${}_6$
• Mixed-valence insulators with neutral Fermi surfaces
• Skyrme insulators: insulators at the brink of superconductivity
• Emergence of supersymmetric quantum electrodynamics
• Fermi surfaces in Kondo insulators
• Unconventional thermal metallic state of charge-neutral fermions in an insulator
• The Anomalous de Haas-van Alphen Effect in InAs/GaSb quantum wells
• Unusual high-field metal in a Kondo insulator
• Theory of Quantum Oscillations of Magnetization in Kondo Insulators
• Anomalous Conductance Oscillations in the Hybridization Gap of InAs/GaSb Quantum Wells
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• Properties of the donor impurity band in mixed valence insulators
• Spin-liquid insulators can be Landau's Fermi liquids
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• Puzzle maker in SmB6: accompany-type valence fluctuation state
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• Resolving the Thermal Paradox: Many-body localization or fractionalization?