Structural and Transport Properties of the Weyl Semimetal NbAs at High Pressure **Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Nos 11422429 and 11421404, the National Basic Research Program of China under Grant Nos 2012CB821402 and 2015CB921401, the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation under Grant No 2014M560288, the Program for Professor of Special Appointment (Eastern Scholar) at Shanghai

Abstract

We perform a series of high-pressure synchrotron x-ray diffraction (XRD) and resistance measurements on the Weyl semimetal NbAs. The crystal structure remains stable up to 26 GPa according to the powder XRD data. The resistance of NbAs single crystal increases monotonically with pressure at low temperature. Up to 20 GPa, no superconducting transition is observed down to 0.3 K. These results show that the Weyl semimetal phase is robust in NbAs, and applying pressure may not be a good way to obtain a topological superconductor from Weyl semimetal NbAs.