Valley-polarized interlayer conduction of anisotropic Dirac fermions in SrMnBi2

Phys Rev Lett. 2014 Oct 10;113(15):156602. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.113.156602. Epub 2014 Oct 6.

Abstract

We report the valley-selective interlayer conduction of SrMnBi(2) under in-plane magnetic fields. The c-axis resistivity of SrMnBi(2) shows clear angular magnetoresistance oscillations indicating coherent interlayer conduction. Strong fourfold variation of the coherent peak in the c-axis resistivity reveals that the contribution of each Dirac valley is significantly modulated by the in-plane field orientation. This originates from anisotropic Dirac Fermi surfaces with strong disparity in the momentum-dependent interlayer coupling. Furthermore, we found a signature of broken valley symmetry at high magnetic fields. These findings demonstrate that a quasi-two-dimensional anisotropic Dirac system can host a valley-polarized interlayer current through magnetic valley control.