Observation of flat bands and Dirac-like bands in a weakly correlated semimetal YRu2Si2

Anup Pradhan Sakhya, Sabin Regmi, Milo Sprague, Mazharul Islam Mondal, Iftakhar Bin Elius, Nathan Valadez, Andrzej Ptok, Dariusz Kaczorowski, Madhab Neupane

Published 2023-04-16Version 1

Condensed matter systems with flat bands have been the center of research interest in recent years as they provide a platform for the emergence of exotic many-body states, such as superconductivity, ferromagnetism, and the fractional quantum Hall effect. However, realization of materials possessing at bands near the Fermi level experimentally is very rare. Here, we report the experimental observation of flat bands in a weakly-correlated system YRu2Si2 employing angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) which is supported by first-principles calculations. These flat bands originate from Ru d orbitals and are found to be sensitive to the polarization of light. In addition, ARPES data revealed surface and bulk Dirac-like bands. The observed ARPES data is in excellent agreement with the density functional theory results. The presence of both flat bands and Dirac-like bands in YRu2Si2 suggest a unique synergy of correlation and topology in this material belonging to the centrosymmetric tetragonal ThCr2Si2-type structure thus establishing a new platform to investigate flat band physics in combination with non-trivial topological states in a weakly correlated system.