Weyl-mediated helical magnetism in NdAlSi

Jonathan Gaudet, Hung Yu Yang, Santu Baidya, Baozhu Lu, Guangyong Xu, Yang Zhao, Jose A. Rodriguez-Rivera, Christina M. Hoffmann, David E. Graf, Darius H. Torchinsky, Predrag Nikolić, David Vanderbilt, Fazel Tafti, Collin L. Broholm

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

62 Scopus citations

Abstract

Emergent relativistic quasiparticles in Weyl semimetals are the source of exotic electronic properties such as surface Fermi arcs, the anomalous Hall effect and negative magnetoresistance, all observed in real materials. Whereas these phenomena highlight the effect of Weyl fermions on the electronic transport properties, less is known about what collective phenomena they may support. Here, we report a Weyl semimetal, NdAlSi, that offers an example. Using neutron diffraction, we found a long-wavelength helical magnetic order in NdAlSi, the periodicity of which is linked to the nesting vector between two topologically non-trivial Fermi pockets, which we characterize using density functional theory and quantum oscillation measurements. We further show the chiral transverse component of the spin structure is promoted by bond-oriented Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interactions associated with Weyl exchange processes. Our work provides a rare example of Weyl fermions driving collective magnetism.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1650-1656
Number of pages7
JournalNature Materials
Volume20
Issue number12
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 2021

Funding

This work was supported as part of the Institute for Quantum Matter, an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences under award no. DE-SC0019331. The work at Boston College was funded by the National Science Foundation under award no. DMR-1708929. C.L.B. and J.G. were supported by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation through GBMF9456. A portion of this work was performed at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, which is supported by the National Science Foundation Cooperative Agreement no. DMR-1644779 and the state of Florida. We also acknowledge the support of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, US Department of Commerce. The identification of any commercial product or trade name does not imply endorsement or recommendation by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Access to MACS was provided by the Center for High Resolution Neutron Scattering, a partnership between the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the National Science Foundation under agreement no. DMR-1508249. A portion of this research used resources at the Spallation Neutron Source, a Department of Energy Office of Science User Facility operated by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. S.B. thanks J. Kim for fruitful discussions on the symmetric Wannier function generations from Wannier90. We thank Y. Li for useful discussions. We are also grateful to Y. Chen, Y. Luo, C. Lygouras and Y. Vekhov for their help during neutron scattering experiments.

FundersFunder number
National Science FoundationDMR-1644779, DMR-1708929
U.S. Department of Energy
National Institute of Standards and Technology
U.S. Department of CommerceDMR-1508249
Gordon and Betty Moore FoundationGBMF9456
Office of Science
Basic Energy SciencesDE-SC0019331

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