Fermi surface topology and large magnetoresistance in the topological semimetal candidate PrBi

Abstract

We report a detailed magnetotransport study on single crystals of PrBi. The presence of $f$-electrons in this material raises the prospect of realizing a strongly correlated version of topological semimetals. PrBi shows a magnetic field induced metal insulator transition below $T\sim 20$ K and a very large magnetoresistance ($\approx 4.4\times 10^4$) at low temperatures ($T=2$ K). We have also probed the Fermi surface topology by de Haas van Alphen (dHvA) and Shubnikov de Haas (SdH) quantum oscillation measurements complimented with density functional theory (DFT) calculations of the band structure and the Fermi surface. Angle dependence of the SdH oscillations have been carried out to probe the possible signature of surface Dirac fermions. We find three frequencies corresponding to one electron ($\alpha$) and two hole ($\beta$ and $\gamma$) pockets in experiments, consistent with DFT calculations. The angular dependence of these frequencies is not consistent with a two dimensional Fermi surface suggesting that the transport is dominated by bulk bands. Although the transport properties of this material originate from the bulk bands, the high mobility and small effective mass are comparable to other compounds in this series proposed as topologically nontrivial.

10 pages, 6 figures, 4 tables

References in corpus (8)

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• Advanced capabilities for materials modelling with Quantum ESPRESSO
• Quantum Spin Hall Effect and Topological Phase Transition in HgTe Quantum Wells
• Titanic Magnetoresistance in WTe2
• Electron scattering in tantalum monoarsenide
• Presence of Exotic Electronic Surface States in LaBi and LaSb
• Origin of the Extremely Large Magnetoresistance in the Semimetal YSb
• Extremely large magnetoresistance and Fermi surface topology of PrSb

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• Signatures of non-trivial band topology in LaAs/LaBi heterostructure
• Possible origin of extremely large magnetoresistance in the topological insulator CaBi2 single crystal