Field-induced chiral transitions in the Weyl semimetal TaP

Abstract

The chiral anomaly effect has been regarded as a hallmark of Weyl semimetals. While most research focuses on the change of electrical conductivity due to the chiral charge-pumping effect, these transport measurements are accompanied by other effects such as weak antilocalization which are difficult to exclude. Also, the magnetic field intensity at which the energy dispersion of the Landau level starts to display the chiral anomaly effect is hard to identify. Here, we report the evolutionary process of the energy dispersion of the zeroth Landau level under increasing magnetic fields, and we elucidate the relationship between the chiral Landau level and the Fermi level via magneto-optical measurements in Weyl semimetal TaP. Two series of Landau-level transitions have been extracted and fitted well to a massless Weyl fermion model and a classical semiconductor model, respectively. The field-induced chiral Landau-level transition is obtained from a comparison between the spectra under Voigt geometry and Faraday geometry in an increasing magnetic field. The chiral nature of the zeroth Landau level is found to enhance with the increase of magnetic field and clearly manifests in the magneto-optical spectrum above 13 T. The state transition of the zeroth Landau level can be explained by the strength of the field-induced chiral anomaly effect and the position of the Fermi level. These magneto-optical results unveil the chiral Landau-level transitions in TaP, which serves as an ideal material platform to analyze the chiral anomaly effect.