Strong and fragile topological Dirac semimetals with higher-order Fermi arcs

Benjamin J Wieder; Zhijun Wang; Jennifer Cano; Xi Dai; Leslie M Schoop; Barry Bradlyn; B Andrei Bernevig

doi:10.1038/s41467-020-14443-5

Strong and fragile topological Dirac semimetals with higher-order Fermi arcs

Nat Commun. 2020 Jan 31;11(1):627. doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-14443-5.

Authors

Benjamin J Wieder¹, Zhijun Wang^{2

3}, Jennifer Cano^{4

5}, Xi Dai⁶, Leslie M Schoop⁷, Barry Bradlyn^{8

9}, B Andrei Bernevig^{10

11

12}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 08544, USA. bwieder@princeton.edu.
² Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics and Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China.
³ University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100049, Beijing, China.
⁴ Department of Physics and Astronomy, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, 11974, USA.
⁵ Center for Computational Quantum Physics, The Flatiron Institute, New York, NY, 10010, USA.
⁶ Physics Department, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Hong Kong, Hong Kong.
⁷ Department of Chemistry, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 08544, USA.
⁸ Department of Physics and Institute for Condensed Matter Theory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, 61801-3080, USA. bbradlyn@illinois.edu.
⁹ Donostia International Physics Center, P. Manuel de Lardizabal 4, 20018, Donostia-San Sebastián, Spain. bbradlyn@illinois.edu.
¹⁰ Department of Physics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 08544, USA. bernevig@princeton.edu.
¹¹ Dahlem Center for Complex Quantum Systems and Fachbereich Physik, Freie Universität Berlin, Arnimallee 14, 14195, Berlin, Germany. bernevig@princeton.edu.
¹² Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics, 06120, Halle, Germany. bernevig@princeton.edu.

Abstract

Dirac and Weyl semimetals both exhibit arc-like surface states. However, whereas the surface Fermi arcs in Weyl semimetals are topological consequences of the Weyl points themselves, the surface Fermi arcs in Dirac semimetals are not directly related to the bulk Dirac points, raising the question of whether there exists a topological bulk-boundary correspondence for Dirac semimetals. In this work, we discover that strong and fragile topological Dirac semimetals exhibit one-dimensional (1D) higher-order hinge Fermi arcs (HOFAs) as universal, direct consequences of their bulk 3D Dirac points. To predict HOFAs coexisting with topological surface states in solid-state Dirac semimetals, we introduce and layer a spinful model of an s-d-hybridized quadrupole insulator (QI). We develop a rigorous nested Jackiw-Rebbi formulation of QIs and HOFA states. Employing ab initio calculations, we demonstrate HOFAs in both the room- (α) and intermediate-temperature (α″) phases of Cd₃As₂, KMgBi, and rutile-structure ([Formula: see text]-) PtO₂.

Abstract

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