We investigate the phase diagram of TmB4, an Ising magnet on a frustrated Shastry-Sutherland lattice, by neutron diffraction and magnetization experiments. At low temperature we find Néel order at low field, ferrimagnetic order at high field, and an intermediate phase with magnetization plateaus at fractional values M/M_(sat)=1/7,1/8,1/9,... and spatial stripe structures. Using an effective S=1/2 model and its equivalent two-dimensional fermion gas we suggest that the magnetic properties of TmB4 are related to the fractional quantum Hall effect of a 2D electron gas.

SmB6 is predicted to be the first member of the intersection of topological insulators and Kondo insulators, strongly correlated materials in which the Fermi level lies in the gap of a many-body resonance that forms by hybridization between localized and itinerant states. While robust, surface-only conductivity at low temperature and the observation of surface states at the expected high symmetry points appear to confirm this prediction, we find both surface states at the (100) surface to be topologically trivial. We find the state to appear Rashba split and explain the prominent state by a surface shift of the many-body resonance. We propose that the latter mechanism, which applies to several crystal terminations, can explain the unusual surface conductivity. While additional, as yet unobserved topological surface states cannot be excluded, our results show that a firm connection between the two material classes is still outstanding.

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