The chiral magnetic effect is the generation of an electric current induced by chirality imbalance in the presence of a magnetic field. It is a macroscopic manifestation of the quantum anomaly in relativistic field theory of chiral fermions (massless spin 1/2 particles with a definite projection of spin on momentum) - a remarkable phenomenon arising from a collective motion of particles and antiparticles in the Dirac sea. The recent discovery of Dirac semimetals with chiral quasiparticles opens a fascinating possibility to study this phenomenon in condensed matter experiments. Here we report on the measurement of magnetotransport in zirconium pentatelluride, ZrTe 5, that provides strong evidence for the chiral magnetic effect. Our angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy experiments show that this material's electronic structure is consistent with a three-dimensional Dirac semimetal. We observe a large negative magnetoresistance when the magnetic field is parallel with the current. The measured quadratic field dependence of the magnetoconductance is a clear indication of the chiral magnetic effect. The observed phenomenon stems from the effective transmutation of a Dirac semimetal into a Weyl semimetal induced by parallel electric and magnetic fields that represent a topologically non-trivial gauge field background. We expect that the chiral magnetic effect may emerge in a wide class of materials that are near the transition between the trivial and topological insulators.

A long-standing issue in topological insulator research has been to find a bulk single crystal material that provides a high-quality platform for characterizing topological surface states without interference from bulk electronic states. This material would ideally be a bulk insulator, have a surface state Dirac point energy well isolated from the bulk valence and conduction bands, display quantum oscillations from the surface state electrons and be growable as large, high-quality bulk single crystals. Here we show that this material obstacle is overcome by bulk crystals of lightly Sn-doped Bi1.1Sb0.9Te2S grown by the vertical Bridgman method. We characterize Sn-BSTS via angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, scanning tunnelling microscopy, transport studies, X-ray diffraction and Raman scattering. We present this material as a high-quality topological insulator that can be reliably grown as bulk single crystals and thus studied by many researchers interested in topological surface states.

A long-standing issue in topological insulator research has been to find a bulk single crystal material that provides a high-quality platform for characterizing topological surface states without interference from bulk electronic states. This material would ideally be a bulk insulator, have a surface state Dirac point energy well isolated from the bulk valence and conduction bands, display quantum oscillations from the surface state electrons and be growable as large, high-quality bulk single crystals. Here we show that this material obstacle is overcome by bulk crystals of lightly Sn-doped Bi 1.1 Sb 0.9 Te 2 S grown by the vertical Bridgman method. We characterize Sn-BSTS via angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, scanning tunnelling microscopy, transport studies, X-ray diffraction and Raman scattering. We present this material as a high-quality topological insulator that can be reliably grown as bulk single crystals and thus studied by many researchers interested in topological surface states.