Trivial to nontrivial topology transition in rare-earth pnictides with epitaxial strain

Abstract

The combination of magneto-transport and topological properties has brought great attention to rare-earth mono-pnictides semimetals. For some of them, like LaSb, it is unclear whether they show non-trivial topology or not based on density functional theory calculations and angular resolved photoemission spectroscopy measurements. Here, we use hybrid density functional theory to demonstrate that LaSb is in fact a trivial topological semimetal, in agreement with experiments, but on the verge of a transition to a topological phase. We show that under compressive epitaxial strain, the La $d$ band crosses the Sb $p$ band near the X${}_3$ point in the Brillouin zone, stabilizing a topologically non-trivial phase, opening unique opportunities to probe the inter-relation between magneto-transport properties and the effects of band topology by examining epitaxially strained and unstrained thin films of the same material.

arXiv commentI want to change the title of my arxiv submission because the published version of this artcile has a slightly different title

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Cited by in corpus (3)

• Epitaxial growth, magnetoresistance, and electronic band structure of GdSb magnetic semimetal films
• Non-trivial topology in rare-earth monopnictides from dimensionality reduction
• Materials and possible mechanisms of extremely large magnetoresistance: A review