Dominant Two-Dimensional Electron–Phonon Interactions in the Bulk Dirac Semimetal Na₃Bi
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1.
California Institute of Technology
Abstract
Bulk Dirac semimetals (DSMs) exhibit unconventional transport properties and phase transitions due to their peculiar low-energy band structure, yet the electronic interactions governing nonequilibrium phenomena in DSMs are not fully understood. Here we show that electron–phonon (e–ph) interactions in a prototypical bulk DSM, Na₃Bi, are predominantly two-dimensional (2D). Our first-principles calculations reveal a 2D optical phonon with strong e–ph interactions associated with in-plane vibrations of Na atoms. We show that this 2D mode governs e–ph scattering and charge transport in Na₃Bi and induces a dynamical phase transition to a Weyl semimetal. Our work advances the quantitative analysis of electron interactions in Na₃Bi and reveals a dominant low-dimensional interaction in a bulk Dirac semimetal.
Copyright and License
© 2023 American Chemical Society.
Acknowledgement
D.C.D. and J.P. thank Ivan Maliyov for fruitful discussions. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant DMR-1750613, which provided for method development, and Grant OAC-2209262, which provided for code development. M.B. was partially supported by the AFOSR and Clarkson Aerospace under Grant FA95502110460. This research used resources of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science User Facility located at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, operated under Contract DE-AC02-05CH11231.
Contributions
D.C.D. and J.P. contributed equally to this work.
Conflict of Interest
The authors declare no competing financial interest.
Additional details
- ISSN
- 1530-6992
- National Science Foundation
- DMR-1750613
- National Science Foundation
- OAC-2209262
- United States Air Force Office of Scientific Research
- FA95502110460
- United States Department of Energy
- DE-AC02-05CH11231