Non-magnetic layers with a single symmetry-protected Dirac cone: Which additional dispersions must appear?

Abstract

In two-dimensional (2D), non-magnetic materials, a single Dirac cone at high-symmetry point (HSP) of the Brillouin zone (BZ), akin to the one in graphenes’ band structure, cannot appear as the only quasiparticle at the Fermi level. Here we found two layer groups with time-reversal symmetry, among all possible both without and with spin-orbit coupling, that host one Dirac cone at HSP and we show which additional dispersions appear: a pair of Dirac lines on opposite BZ edges and a pair of Dirac cones that can be moved but not removed by symmetry preserving perturbations, on the other two BZ edges. We illustrate our theory by a tight-binding band structure and discuss real 2D materials that belong to one of the two symmetry groups. Finally, we single out smaller or bigger discrepancies among the published papers on the same or related topic.