Emergence of Fermi arcs due to magnetic splitting in an antiferromagnet

The Fermi surface plays an important role in controlling the electronic, transport and thermodynamic properties of materials. As the Fermi surface consists of closed contours in the momentum space for well-defined energy bands, disconnected sections known as Fermi arcs can be signatures of unusual electronic states, such as a pseudogap¹. Another way to obtain Fermi arcs is to break either the time-reversal symmetry² or the inversion symmetry³ of a three-dimensional Dirac semimetal, which results in formation of pairs of Weyl nodes that have opposite chirality⁴, and their projections are connected by Fermi arcs at the bulk boundary^3,5–12. Here, we present experimental evidence that pairs of hole- and electron-like Fermi arcs emerge below the Neel temperature (T_N) in the antiferromagnetic state of cubic NdBi due to a new magnetic splitting effect. The observed magnetic splitting is unusual, as it creates bands of opposing curvature, which change with temperature and follow the antiferromagnetic order parameter. This is different from previous theoretically considered^13,14 and experimentally reported cases^15,16 of magnetic splitting, such as traditional Zeeman and Rashba, in which the curvature of the bands is preserved. Therefore, our findings demonstrate a type of magnetic band splitting in the presence of a long-range antiferromagnetic order that is not readily explained by existing theoretical ideas.