Predictions lay groundwork for experiments to create ‘Weyl-Kondo semimetal’
Rice University physicists (from left) Hsin-Hua Lai, Qimiao Si and Sarah Grefe have made predictions that could help experimental physicists create the first “Weyl-Kondo semimetal.” (Photo by Jeff Fitlow/Rice University)
U.S. and European physicists searching for an explanation for high-temperature superconductivity were surprised when their theoretical model pointed to the existence of a never-before-seen material in a different realm of physics: topological quantum materials.
In a new study due this week in the Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Rice University theoretical physicist Qimiao Si and colleagues at the Rice Center for Quantum Materials in Houston and the Vienna University of Technology in Austria make predictions that could help experimental physicists create what the authors have coined a “Weyl-Kondo semimetal,” a quantum material with an assorted collection of properties seen in disparate materials like topological insulators, heavy fermion metals and high-temperature superconductors.