UC Irvine

We report the observation of two pressure-induced quantum phase transitions in a YbB6 single crystal, i.e., from a topologically trivial semiconductor to an intermediate semimetal and then from the semimetal to a possible topologically nontrivial high-pressure gapped phase through in situ high-pressure transport and synchrotron x-ray diffraction measurements. Our high-pressure absorption results reveal that the mixed-valence state in pressurized YbB6 above 15 GPa plays an important role in the formation of the high-pressure state with a reopened gap. These high-pressure results may be helpful for shedding light on the intriguing relation between the topology and the 4f electrons in the rare-earth hexaborides.