Crossover behavior in the magnetoresistance of thin flakes of the topological material ZrTe5

TL;DR

This study investigates the temperature-dependent magnetoresistance in ZrTe5 thin flakes, revealing a characteristic temperature T* linked to topological phase transitions, with implications for understanding topological materials.

Contribution

It identifies a common temperature T* where multiple magnetoresistance effects converge, indicating topological phase transitions in ZrTe5 thin flakes, advancing understanding of topological phase behavior.

Findings

T* decreases from 200K to 160K with increasing flake thickness

Magnetoresistance anomalies are linked to topological phase transitions

The results suggest a multi-parameter indicator for topological transitions

Abstract

ZrTe5 is a layered material that exhibits intricate topological effects. Intensive theoretically and experimental efforts have been devoted to try to understand the physics in this materials. In this paper the temperature dependent magneto-transport properties of ZrTe5 thin flakes are investigated. A characteristic temperature T* is observed in the temperature dependence of three different types of magnetoresistance simultaneously, which are the saturated Hall anomaly, the chiral anomaly and the longitudinal magnetoresistance. Furthermore, the value of T* decreases monotonically from 200K to 160K with increasing thickness of the ZrTe5 thin flakes from 42nm to 89nm. Temperature induced topological phase transitions are attributed to the cause of such anomaly in the three types of magnetoresistance at T*. Our findings provide a multi-parameter indicator for the emergence of topological phase transition in ZrTe5 and could be extended to the study of other topological materials. The temperature dependence of the three types of magnetoresistance also shed light on the role of anomalous Hall Effect in the transport properties of ZrTe5.