Emergent Heavy-Fermion Physics in a Family of Topological Insulators R AsS ( R = Y, La, and Sm)
Abstract
High Resolution Image Download MS PowerPoint Slide Realizing topological phases in strongly correlated materials has become a major impetus in condensed matter physics. Although many compounds are now classified as topological insulators, f -electron systems provide an especially fertile platform for emergent heavy-fermion phenomena driven by the interplay of topology and many-body effects. In this study, we examine the crystalline topology of a new R AsS series ( R = Y, La, Sm), revealing a structural variant from previous reports. We demonstrate that YAsS and SmAsS host hourglass fermions protected by glide symmetry. SmAsS notably exhibits a strong effective-mass enhancement, placing it alongside SmB 6 and YbB 12 as a material that exemplifies how the Kondo effects pin the correlated f -electron states near the Fermi energy and, consequently, renormalize the energy and mass scales of topological surface states without destroying their crystalline protection. This tunability establishes SmAsS as a bridge between weakly correlated topological materials and Kondo insulators. To capture these features, we construct a minimal model incorporating f -electron degrees of freedom, which reproduces the observed topological properties and predicts that the surface states survive in the correlated regime, albeit shifted in energy. Our work thus introduces a new family of correlated topological materials and forecasts the robustness of their surface states under Kondo correlations.
Fields of Study & Subjects
Topological Materials and Phenomena
Rare-earth and actinide compounds
Advanced Condensed Matter Physics
Publication details
- Journal / source
- Journal of the American Chemical Society
- Volume
- 148
- Issue
- 12
- Pages
- 12979–12989
- Publication date
- 10 March 2026
- Language
- EN