Pressure-Induced New Topological Weyl Semimetal Phase in TaAs.

Abstract

We report a new pressure-induced phase in TaAs with different Weyl fermions than the ambient structure with the aid of theoretical calculations, experimental transport and synchrotron structure investigations up to 53GPa. We show that TaAs transforms from an ambient I4_{1}md phase (t-TaAs) to a high-pressure hexagonal P-6m2 (h-TaAs) phase at 14GPa, along with changes of the electronic state from containing 24 Weyl nodes distributed at two energy levels to possessing 12 Weyl nodes at an isoenergy level, which substantially reduces the interference between the surface and bulk states. The new pressure-induced phase can be reserved upon releasing pressure to ambient condition, which allows one to study the exotic behavior of a single set of Weyl fermions, such as the interplay between surface states and other properties.