SearcharxivSearch

arXiv · 2502.01871

Observation of quantum oscillations, linear magnetoresistance, and crystalline electric field effect in quasi-two-dimensional PrAgBi$_2$

Abstract

We report the magnetic and magnetotransport properties with electronic band structure calculation of the Bi square net system PrAgBi$_2$. The magnetization and heat capacity data confirm the presence of a crystalline electric field (CEF) effect in PrAgBi$_2$. Analysis of the CEF effect using a multilevel energy scheme reveals that the ground state of PrAgBi$_2$ consists of five singlets and two doublets. The de Haas-van Alphen (dHvA) quantum oscillations data show a single frequency with a very small cyclotron effective mass of approximately 0.11 $m_e$. A nontrivial Berry phase is also observed from the quantum oscillations data. The magnetotransport data shows linear and unsaturated magnetoresistance, reaching up to 1060\% at 2 K and 9 T. Notably, there is a crossover from a weak-field quadratic dependence to a high-field linear dependence in the field-dependent magnetoresistance data. The crossover critical field $B^*$ follows the quadratic temperature dependence, indicating the existence of Dirac fermions. The band structure calculation shows several Dirac-like linear band dispersions near the Fermi level and a Dirac point close to the Fermi level, located at the Brillouin zone boundary. \textit{Ab inito} calculations allowed us to ascribe the observed dHvA oscillation frequency to a particular feature of the Fermi surface. Our study suggests layered PrAgBi$_2$ is a plausible candidate for hosting the CEF effect and Dirac fermion in the Bi square net.

Explore related subjects

Keep this discovery

BibTeXRIS

Sudip Malick, Hanna Świątek, Michał J Winiarski, Tomasz Klimczuk. 2025-02-03. Observation of quantum oscillations, linear magnetoresistance, and crystalline electric field effect in quasi-two-dimensional PrAgBi$_2$. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevb.111.045144

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

Competing Interlayer Loop Currents and Superconductivity in the Bilayer $t$-$J_\perp$-$V$ Model

The recent discovery of high-$T_c$ superconductivity in pressurized and thin-film bilayer nickelates, featuring a strong interlayer exchange coupling, and their potential similarities with cuprate superconductors, has made this a very active topic in condensed matter physics. In the present paper we study the strongly correlated one-orbital ($d_{x^2-y^2}$) bilayer $t$-$J_\perp$-$V$ model for nickelates, where $V$ denotes the Coulomb interactions, using a controlled large-$N$ expansion at and beyond the mean-field level. Focusing on the out-of-plane spin exchange interaction ($J_\perp$), we find that it triggers both out-of-plane $s$-wave superconductivity and an out-of-plane bond-order phase ($z$-BOP) instability. The $z$-BOP gives rise to a complex $z$-axis hopping dominated by its imaginary component, which drives out-of-plane currents and induces in-plane ones, spontaneously forming on the vertical plaquettes a loop-current state that breaks time-reversal symmetry. Competition between this loop-current phase and superconductivity yields a dome-shaped superconducting region, with optimal superconductivity occurring near the $z$-BOP quantum critical point. The resulting phase diagram features a pure loop-current region, a low-doping coexistence phase, a pure superconducting state at higher doping, and a correlated metallic state.

cond-mat.str-el

Optically induced metallic state with persistent monoclinic symmetry in NdNiO$_3$

Understanding whether electronic and structural order remain coupled under nonequilibrium conditions is a central challenge in correlated materials. Here, we simultaneously track metallicity and symmetry across the photoinduced insulator-to-metal transition in NdNiO$_3$ using time-resolved optical reflectivity and symmetry-sensitive second-harmonic generation. We find that metallic reflectivity emerges at significantly lower excitation fluence than restoration of the orthorhombic high-temperature symmetry. As a result, optical excitation stabilizes a metastable state that combines the reflectivity of the metallic phase with the monoclinic symmetry of the insulating phase, revealing an optically induced monoclinic metal. Only at substantially higher fluences does the symmetry fully recover to that of the high-temperature phase. These results demonstrate a nonequilibrium decoupling of metallicity and structural symmetry and establish simultaneous multiprobe spectroscopy as a powerful approach for identifying emergent phases in correlated materials.

cond-mat.str-el

Instabilities in self-consistent diagrammatic approaches and how to cure them

While self-consistent diagrammatic approaches are widely used to compute the physical properties of correlated quantum materials, their applicability may get severely hindered precisely in the parameter regions, where the most exciting physics is observed. One of the major issues, referred to as "misleading convergence", is the tendency of iterative schemes to converge to unphysical fixed points for intermediate-to-strong electronic interactions, regardless of numerical accuracy of the computation. Here, we explicitly verify that the origin of this problem in several established self-consistent many-electron approaches, defined in the general diagrammatic framework of the boson-exchange formalism, resides exclusively in the stability condition of the respective iteration schemes, and not in an intrinsic breakdown of their self-consistent diagrammatic description. This insight enables a simple and general remedy, as recently proposed in Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 016502 (2026): The redefinition of the iterative procedure, by inverting the unstable eigendirections of the Jacobian associated to the fixed point of the self-consistent algorithm. We illustrate the successful outcome of this procedure by means of systematic calculations performed on testbed, exactly solvable, models. Our results demonstrate that the physical fixed point of the diagrammatic schemes we considered can be stabilized, de facto, across the entire parameter range, including the most challenging nonperturbative/strong-coupling regimes.

cond-mat.str-el