In physics, Dirac cones are features that occur in some electronic band structures that describe unusual electron transport properties of materials like graphene and topological insulators.[1][2][3] In these materials, at energies near the Fermi level, the valence band and conduction band take the shape of the upper and lower halves of a conical surface, meeting at what are called Dirac points.
Typical examples include graphene, topological insulators, bismuth antimony thin films and some other novel nanomaterials,[1][4][5] in which the electronic energy and momentum have a linear dispersion relation such that the electronic band structure near the Fermi level takes the shape of an upper conical surface for the electrons and a lower conical surface for the holes. The two conical surfaces touch each other and form a zero-band gap semimetal.
The name of Dirac cone comes from the Dirac equation that can describe relativistic particles in quantum mechanics, proposed by Paul Dirac. Isotropic Dirac cones in graphene were first predicted by P. R. Wallace in 1947[6] and experimentally observed by the Nobel Prize laureates Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov in 2005.[7]
Description
editIn quantum mechanics, Dirac cones are a kind of crossing-point which electrons avoid,[8] where the energy of the valence and conduction bands are not equal anywhere in two dimensional lattice k-space, except at the zero dimensional Dirac points. As a result of the cones, electrical conduction can be described by the movement of charge carriers which are massless fermions, a situation which is handled theoretically by the relativistic Dirac equation.[9] The massless fermions lead to various quantum Hall effects, magnetoelectric effects in topological materials, and ultra high carrier mobility.[10][11] Dirac cones were observed in 2008-2009, using angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) on the potassium-graphite intercalation compound KC8[12] and on several bismuth-based alloys.[13][14][11]
As an object with three dimensions, Dirac cones are a feature of two-dimensional materials or surface states, based on a linear dispersion relation between energy and the two components of the crystal momentum kx and ky. However, this concept can be extended to three dimensions, where Dirac semimetals are defined by a linear dispersion relation between energy and kx, ky, and kz. In k-space, this shows up as a hypercone, which have doubly degenerate bands which also meet at Dirac points.[11] Dirac semimetals contain both time reversal and spatial inversion symmetry; when one of these is broken, the Dirac points are split into two constituent Weyl points, and the material becomes a Weyl semimetal.[15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][excessive citations] In 2014, direct observation of the Dirac semimetal band structure using ARPES was conducted on the Dirac semimetal cadmium arsenide.[26][27][28]
Analog systems
editDirac points have been realized in many physical areas such as plasmonics, phononics, or nanophotonics (microcavities,[29] photonic crystals[30]).
See also
editReferences
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- ^ Dirac cones could exist in bismuth–antimony films. Physics World, Institute of Physics, 17 April 2012.
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- ^ The Nobel Prize in Physics 2010 Press Release. Nobelprize.org, 5 October 2010. Retrieved 2011-12-31.
- ^ Fuchs, Jean-Noël; Lim, Lih-King; Montambaux, Gilles (2012). "Interband tunneling near the merging transition of Dirac cones" (PDF). Physical Review A. 86 (6): 063613. arXiv:1210.3703. Bibcode:2012PhRvA..86f3613F. doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.86.063613. S2CID 67850936. Archived from the original (PDF) on 21 January 2023. Retrieved 29 August 2018.
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- ^ Xu, S.-Y.; Belopolski, I.; Alidoust, N.; Neupane, M.; Bian, G.; Zhang, C.; et al. (2015). "Discovery of a Weyl Fermion semimetal and topological Fermi arcs". Science. 349 (6248): 613–617. arXiv:1502.03807. Bibcode:2015Sci...349..613X. doi:10.1126/science.aaa9297. PMID 26184916. S2CID 206636457.
- ^ Xu, Su-Yang; Alidoust, Nasser; Belopolski, Ilya; Yuan, Zhujun; Bian, Guang; Chang, Tay-Rong; et al. (2015). "Discovery of a Weyl fermion state with Fermi arcs in niobium arsenide". Nature Physics. 11 (9): 748–754. arXiv:1504.01350. Bibcode:2015NatPh..11..748X. doi:10.1038/nphys3437. ISSN 1745-2481. S2CID 119118252.
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Further reading
edit- Wehling, T.O.; Black-Schaffer, A.M.; Balatsky, A.V. (2014). "Dirac materials". Advances in Physics. 63 (1): 1. arXiv:1405.5774. Bibcode:2014AdPhy..63....1W. doi:10.1080/00018732.2014.927109. S2CID 118557449.
- Johnston, Hamish (23 July 2015). "Weyl fermions are spotted at long last". Physics World. Retrieved 22 November 2018.
- Ciudad, David (20 August 2015). "Massless, yet real". Nature Materials. 14 (9): 863. doi:10.1038/nmat4411. ISSN 1476-1122. PMID 26288972.
- Vishwanath, Ashvin (8 September 2015). "Where the Weyl things are". Physics. 8: 84. Bibcode:2015PhyOJ...8...84V. doi:10.1103/Physics.8.84. Retrieved 22 November 2018.
- Jia, Shuang; Xu, Su-Yang; Hasan, M. Zahid (25 October 2016). "Weyl semimetals, Fermi arcs, and chiral anomaly". Nature Materials. 15 (11): 1140–1144. arXiv:1612.00416. Bibcode:2016NatMa..15.1140J. doi:10.1038/nmat4787. PMID 27777402. S2CID 1115349.
- Hasan, M. Z.; Xu, S.-Y.; Neupane, M. (2015). "Chapter 4: Topological insulators, topological Dirac semimetals, topological crystalline insulators, and topological Kondo insulators". In Ortmann, Frank; Roche, Stephan; Valenzuela, Sergio O. (eds.). Topological Insulators: Fundamentals and Perspectives. Wiley. pp. 55–100. arXiv:1406.1040. Bibcode:2014arXiv1406.1040Z. ISBN 978-3-527-33702-6.