Electrodynamic properties of the semimetallic Dirac material SrMnBi2: Two-carrier-model analysis

Abstract

The electrodynamics of free carriers in the semimetallic Dirac material SrMnBi2 was investigated using optical spectroscopy and first-principles calculations. Using a two-carrier-model analysis, the total free-carrier response was successfully decomposed into individual contributions from Dirac fermions and non-Dirac free carriers. Possible roles of chiral pseudospin, spin-orbit interaction (SOI), antiferromagnetism, and electron-phonon (e-ph) coupling in the Dirac fermion transport were also addressed. The Dirac fermions possess a low scattering rate of similar to 10 meV at low temperature and thereby experience coherent transport. However, at high temperatures, we observed that the Dirac fermion transport becomes significantly incoherent, possibly due to strong e-ph interactions. The SOI-induced gap and antiferromagnetism play minor roles in the electrodynamics of the free carriers in SrMnBi2. We also observed a seemingly optical-gap-like feature near 120 meV, which emerges at low temperatures but becomes filled in with increasing temperature. This gap-filling phenomenon is ascribed to phonon-assisted indirect transitions promoted at high temperatures.