Detection of Berry's Phase in a Bulk Rashba Semiconductor

作者：Murakawa, H.^*; Bahramy, M. S.; Tokunaga, M.; Kohama, Y.; Bell, C.; Kaneko, Y.; Nagaosa, N.; Hwang, H. Y.; Tokura, Y.

来源：Science, 2013, 342(6165): 1490-1493.

DOI：10.1126/science.1242247

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The motion of electrons in a solid has a profound effect on its topological properties and may result in a nonzero Berry's phase, a geometric quantum phase encoded in the system's electronic wave function. Despite its ubiquity, there are few experimental observations of Berry's phase of bulk states. Here, we report detection of a nontrivial pi Berry's phase in the bulk Rashba semiconductor BiTeI via analysis of the Shubnikov-de Haas (SdH) effect. The extremely large Rashba splitting in this material enables the separation of SdH oscillations, stemming from the spin-split inner and outer Fermi surfaces. For both Fermi surfaces, we observe a systematic pi-phase shift in SdH oscillations, consistent with the theoretically predicted nontrivial pi Berry's phase in Rashba systems.

• 出版日期2013-12-20