Quasi-particle interferences of the Weyl semimetals TaAs and NbP

Understand

The recent discovery of the first Weyl semimetal in TaAs provides the first observation of a Weyl fermion in nature.

• Such a topological semimetal features a novel type of anomalous surface state, the Fermi arc, which connects a pair of Weyl nodes through the boundary of the crystal.
• Here, we present theoretical calculations of the quasi-particle interference (QPI) patterns that arise from the surface states including the topological Fermi arcs in the Weyl semimetals TaAs and NbP.
• Most importantly, we discover that the QPI exhibits termination-points that are fingerprints of the Weyl nodes in the interference pattern.