Strain-induced nonsymmorphic symmetry breaking and removal of Dirac semimetallic nodal line in an orthoperovskite iridate
Strain-induced nonsymmorphic symmetry breaking and removal of Dirac semimetallic nodal line in an orthoperovskite iridate
By using a combination of heteroepitaxial growth, structure refinement based on synchrotron x-ray diffraction and first-principles calculations, we show that the symmetry-protected Dirac line nodes in the topological semimetallic perovskite SrIrO3 can be lifted simply by applying epitaxial constraints. In particular, the Dirac gap opens without breaking the Pbnm mirror …