Parallel spin-momentum locking in a chiral topological semimetal

TL;DR

This study experimentally demonstrates parallel spin-momentum locking in a chiral topological semimetal, revealing a new spin texture that could enable advanced spintronic applications and novel quantum phenomena.

Contribution

It provides the first experimental evidence of parallel spin-momentum locking in a multifold fermion within a chiral topological semimetal using spin- and angle-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy.

Findings

Electron spins point orthogonal to Fermi surface contours near the multifold fermion projection.

Consistent observation of parallel spin-momentum locking in topological Fermi-arc surface states.

Potential implications for spintronic devices and quantum material research.

Abstract

Spin-momentum locking in solids describes a directional relationship between the electron's spin angular momentum and its linear momentum over the entire Fermi surface. While orthogonal spin-momentum locking, such as Rashba spin-orbit coupling, has been studied for decades and inspired a vast number of applications, its natural counterpart, the purely parallel spin-momentum locking, has remained elusive in experiments. Recently, chiral topological semimetals that host single- and multifold band crossings have been predicted to realize such parallel locking. Here, we use spin- and angle-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy to probe spin-momentum locking of a multifold fermion in the chiral topological semimetal PtGa via the spin-texture of its topological Fermi-arc surface states. We find that the electron spin of the Fermi-arcs points orthogonal to their Fermi surface contour for momenta close to the projection of the bulk multifold fermion, which is consistent with parallel spin-momentum locking of the latter. We anticipate that our discovery of parallel spin-momentum locking of multifold fermions will lead to the integration of chiral topological semimetals in novel spintronic devices, and the search for spin-dependent superconducting and magnetic instabilities in these materials.