Experimental observation of Weyl points
Abstract
Weyl fermions—massless particles with half-integer spin—were once mistakenly thought to describe neutrinos. Although not yet observed among elementary particles, Weyl fermions may exist as collective excitations in so-called Weyl semimetals. These materials have an unusual band structure in which the linearly dispersing valence and conduction bands meet at discrete “Weyl points.” Xu et al. used photoemission spectroscopy to identify TaAs as a Weyl semimetal capable of hosting Weyl fermions. In a complementary study, Lu et al. detected the characteristic Weyl points in a photonic crystal. The observation of Weyl physics may enable the discovery of exotic fundamental phenomena.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Aug 07, 2015
- Source ID
- 10.1126/science.aaa9273
Entities
People
- Dexin Ye
- John D. Joannopoulos
- Liang Fu
- Ling Lu
- Lixin Ran
- Marin Soljačić
- Zhiyu Wang
Organizations
- Army Research Office
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- United States Department of Energy
- Zhejiang University