Spontaneous breaking of isotropy observed in the electronic transport of rare-earth tritellurides.
We show that the isotropic conductivity in the normal state of rare-earth tritelluride RTe3 compounds is broken by the occurrence of the unidirectional charge density wave (CDW) in the (a, c) plane below the Peierls transition temperature. In contrast with quasi-one-dimensional systems, the resistivity anomaly associated with the CDW transition is strong in the direction perpendicular to the CDW wave vector Q (a axis) and very weak in the CDW wave vector Q direction (c axis). We qualitatively explain this result by calculating the electrical conductivity for the electron dispersion with momentum-dependent CDW gap as determined by angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy. Similar measurements of in-plane conductivity may uncover the gap anisotropy in other compounds for which angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy is not available.
Kotelnikov Institute of Radioengineering and Electronics of RAS, Mokhovaya 11-7, 125009 Moscow, Russia and Universite Grenoble Alpes, Institut Neel, F-38042 Grenoble, France; CNRS, Institut Neel, F-38042 Grenoble, France.
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Sinchenko
L.D. Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics, 142432 Chernogolovka, Russia.
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Grigoriev
Universite Grenoble Alpes, Institut Neel, F-38042 Grenoble, France; CNRS, Institut Neel, F-38042 Grenoble, France.
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Lejay
Universite Grenoble Alpes, Institut Neel, F-38042 Grenoble, France; CNRS, Institut Neel, F-38042 Grenoble, France.
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Monceau