# A Weyl Fermion semimetal with surface Fermi arcs in the transition metal monopnictide TaAs class

Article · Shin-Ming Huang, Su‐Yang Xu, Ilya Belopolski, Chi‐Cheng Lee, Guoqing Chang, Baokai Wang, Nasser Alidoust, Guang Bian, Madhab Neupane, Chenglong Zhang, Shuang Jia, Arun Bansil, Hsin Lin, M. Zahid Hasan

- Archive id: doi:10.1038/ncomms8373
- Published: 2015-06-12
- Venue: Nature Communications
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms8373
- PMID: 26067579
- Citations: 1,576
- Source URL: https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms8373
- PDF: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms8373.pdf
- Provenance: openalex

## Abstract

Weyl fermions are massless chiral fermions that play an important role in quantum field theory but have never been observed as fundamental particles. A Weyl semimetal is an unusual crystal that hosts Weyl fermions as quasiparticle excitations and features Fermi arcs on its surface. Such a semimetal not only provides a condensed matter realization of the anomalies in quantum field theories but also demonstrates the topological classification beyond the gapped topological insulators. Here, we identify a topological Weyl semimetal state in the transition metal monopnictide materials class. Our first-principles calculations on TaAs reveal its bulk Weyl fermion cones and surface Fermi arcs. Our results show that in the TaAs-type materials the Weyl semimetal state does not depend on fine-tuning of chemical composition or magnetic order, which opens the door for the experimental realization of Weyl semimetals and Fermi arc surface states in real materials.

_Abstract reproduced under CC-BY (publisher license, via OpenAlex)._

Topics: [Topological Phases & Anyons](https://space-kitty.com/topics/topological-matter)

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