Weyl fermion excitations in the ideal Weyl semimetal CuTlSe2

Abstract

An ideal Weyl semimetal is characterized by a dispersion in which only Weyl cones intersect the Fermi level, with low-energy behavior being governed by Weyl fermions. Although ideal Weyl semimetals have long been anticipated, only a few are realized in nonmagnetic materials. In this study, we confirm the presence of Weyl-fermion excitations in the ideal Weyl semimetal CuTlSe2 via a combination of magnetoresistance, Hall-effect, magnetic-susceptibility, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), and muon-spin relaxation (µSR) experiments. Magnetoresistance measurements reveal a negative longitudinal magnetoresistance (LMR), which scales as B2, while Hall-effect results indicate a predominant contribution from Weyl fermions with a hole-type charge. Magnetic susceptibility and µSR measurements indicate the lack of any intrinsic spontaneous magnetic moments down to base temperature. Finally, the NMR results can be modeled by a two-component effective Hamiltonian, which reproduces well the temperature-dependent Cu63 NMR (T1T)−1 factor, shown to scale as T2 below 100 K and as T1 above 100 K. Overall, we find that the extremely low concentration (1017cm−3) of carriers in CuTlSe2 originates from an ideal nonmagnetic Weyl semimetallic state, persisting up to a thermal excitation energy of 9 meV (100 K), above which trivial electronic bands close to EF take over. Our findings highlight CuTlSe2 as a new member of the intriguing class of Weyl semimetals. Published by the American Physical Society 2024