2021, Bannies, J., Razzoli, E., Michiardi, M., Kung, H.-H., Elfimov, I.S., Yao, M., Fedorov, A., Fink, J., Jozwiak, C., Bostwick, A., Rotenberg, E., Damascelli, A., Felser, C.

Several early transition metal dipnictides (TMDPs) have been found to host topological semimetal states and exhibit large magnetoresistance (MR). In this paper, we use angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) and magnetotransport to study the electronic properties of a TMDP ZrP2. We find that ZrP2 exhibits an extremely large and unsaturated MR of up to 40 000% at 2 K, which originates from an almost perfect electron-hole (e-h) compensation. Our band structure calculations further show that ZrP2 hosts a topological nodal loop in proximity to the Fermi level. Based on the ARPES measurements, we confirm the results of our calculations and determine the surface band structure. This paper establishes ZrP2 as a platform to investigate near-perfect e-h compensation and its interplay with topological band structures.

2018, Heidemann, Knut M., Sageman-Furnas, Andrew O., Sharma, Abhinav, Rehfeldt, Florian, Schmidt, Christoph F., Wardetzky, Max

Networks of elastic fibers are ubiquitous in biological systems and often provide mechanical stability to cells and tissues. Fiber-reinforced materials are also common in technology. An important characteristic of such materials is their resistance to failure under load. Rupture occurs when fibers break under excessive force and when that failure propagates. Therefore, it is crucial to understand force distributions. Force distributions within such networks are typically highly inhomogeneous and are not well understood. Here we construct a simple one-dimensional model system with periodic boundary conditions by randomly placing linear springs on a circle. We consider ensembles of such networks that consist of N nodes and have an average degree of connectivity z but vary in topology. Using a graph-theoretical approach that accounts for the full topology of each network in the ensemble, we show that, surprisingly, the force distributions can be fully characterized in terms of the parameters (N,z). Despite the universal properties of such (N,z) ensembles, our analysis further reveals that a classical mean-field approach fails to capture force distributions correctly. We demonstrate that network topology is a crucial determinant of force distributions in elastic spring networks.