Coherent magnetic excitations in a topological Kondo semimetal

TL;DR

This paper uses inelastic neutron scattering to reveal momentum-dependent magnetic excitations in CeNiSn, demonstrating it as a topological Kondo insulator with heavy, renormalized bands exhibiting a spin-gap and topological properties.

Contribution

It provides experimental evidence of a topological Kondo insulating state in CeNiSn through spectroscopic measurements and theoretical modeling.

Findings

Observation of momentum-dependent magnetic excitations.

Identification of a spin-gap in the Kondo coherent state.

Correlation of experimental data with topological heavy band structure.

Abstract

In Kondo insulators the many-body Kondo lattice effect drives the formation of bands containing heavy charge carriers with a hybridization gap, leading to insulating properties. These renormalized bands can host non-trivial topologies driven by strong electron-electron interactions, but probing narrow heavy bands at low temperatures is challenging. We use inelastic neutron scattering (INS) to probe the Kondo lattice CeNiSn, which hosts both semimetallic transport properties and a hybridization gap. The INS response exhibits momentum-dependent magnetic excitations and a spin-gap in the low-temperature Kondo coherent state, which electronic structure calculations corroborate as arising from the renormalized heavy band structure. Dynamical-mean field theory demonstrates that this renormalized band structure corresponds to a topological Kondo insulating state, and hence the INS probes bulk excitations of heavy topological bands. This identification of a Kondo insulator addresses the long-standing mystery of the electronic properties of CeNiSn, and demonstrates the manifestation of a topological many-body coherent state in spectroscopic measurements of strongly correlated narrow band materials.