490 research outputs found
Large magnetoresistance in the antiferromagnetic semi-metal NdSb
There has been considerable interest in topological semi-metals that exhibit
extreme magnetoresistance (XMR). These have included materials lacking
inversion symmetry such as TaAs, as well Dirac semi-metals such as Cd3As2.
However, it was reported recently that LaSb and LaBi also exhibit XMR, even
though the rock-salt structure of these materials has inversion symmetry, and
the band-structure calculations do not show a Dirac dispersion in the bulk.
Here, we present magnetoresistance and specific heat measurements on NdSb,
which is isostructural with LaSb. NdSb has an antiferromagnetic groundstate,
and in analogy with the lanthanum monopnictides, is expected to be a
topologically non-trivial semi-metal. We show that NdSb has an XMR of 10^4 %,
even within the AFM state, illustrating that XMR can occur independently of the
absence of time reversal symmetry breaking in zero magnetic field. The
persistence of XMR in a magnetic system offers promise of new functionality
when combining topological matter with electronic correlations. We also find
that in an applied magnetic field below the Neel temperature there is a first
order transition, consistent with evidence from previous neutron scattering
work.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figure
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