Origin of the quasi-quantized Hall effect in ZrTe5
S. Galeski, T. Ehmcke, R. Wawrzyńczak, P. M. Lozano, K. Cho, A. Sharma, S. Das, F. Küster, P. Sessi, M. Brando, R. Küchler, A. Markou, M. König, P. Swekis, C. Felser, Y. Sassa, Q. Li, G. Gu, M. V. Zimmermann, O. Ivashko, D. I. Gorbunov, S. Zherlitsyn, T. Förster, S. S. P. Parkin, J. Wosnitza, T. Meng, J. Gooth
Abstract
Abstract The quantum Hall effect (QHE) is traditionally considered to be a purely two-dimensional (2D) phenomenon. Recently, however, a three-dimensional (3D) version of the QHE was reported in the Dirac semimetal ZrTe 5 . It was proposed to arise from a magnetic-field-driven Fermi surface instability, transforming the original 3D electron system into a stack of 2D sheets. Here, we report thermodynamic, spectroscopic, thermoelectric and charge transport measurements on such ZrTe 5 samples. The measured properties: magnetization, ultrasound propagation, scanning tunneling spectroscopy, and Raman spectroscopy, show no signatures of a Fermi surface instability, consistent with in-field single crystal X-ray diffraction. Instead, a direct comparison of the experimental data with linear response calculations based on an effective 3D Dirac Hamiltonian suggests that the quasi-quantization of the observed Hall response emerges from the interplay of the intrinsic properties of the ZrTe 5 electronic structure and its Dirac-type semi-metallic character.