Two-dimensional Massless Dirac Fermions in Antiferromagnetic AFe2As2 (A = Ba, Sr)

TL;DR

This study provides evidence for two-dimensional massless Dirac fermions in antiferromagnetic BaFe₂As₂ and SrFe₂As₂, revealing their topological protection and how substitution affects their Fermi velocity through infrared Landau level spectroscopy.

Contribution

The paper demonstrates the existence of 2D massless Dirac fermions in antiferromagnetic AFe₂As₂ compounds using infrared Landau level spectroscopy and theoretical calculations, highlighting their topological nature.

Findings

Observation of Landau levels with √B dependence.

Identification of 2D massless Dirac fermions in BaFe₂As₂.

Enhanced Fermi velocity with Sr substitution.

Abstract

We report infrared studies of AFe$_{2}$As$_{2}$ (A = Ba, Sr), two representative parent compounds of iron-arsenide superconductors, at magnetic fields (B) up to 17.5 T. Optical transitions between Landau levels (LLs) were observed in the antiferromagnetic states of these two parent compounds. Our observation of a $\sqrt{B}$ dependence of the LL transition energies, the zero-energy intercepts at B = 0 T under the linear extrapolations of the transition energies and the energy ratio ($\sim$ 2.4) between the observed LL transitions, combined with the linear band dispersions in two-dimensional (2D) momentum space obtained by theoretical calculations, demonstrates the existence of massless Dirac fermions in antiferromagnetic BaFe$_{2}$As$_{2}$. More importantly, the observed dominance of the zeroth-LL-related absorption features and the calculated bands with extremely weak dispersions along the momentum direction $k_{z}$ indicate that massless Dirac fermions in BaFe$_{2}$As$_{2}$ are 2D. Furthermore, we find that the total substitution of the barium atoms in BaFe$_{2}$As$_{2}$ by strontium atoms not only maintains 2D massless Dirac fermions in this system, but also enhances their Fermi velocity, which supports that the Dirac points in iron-arsenide parent compounds are topologically protected.