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    Parity Anomalous Semimetal with Minimal Conductivity Induced by an In-Plane Magnetic Field

    Binbin Wang1,*, Jiayuan Hu1,*, Bo Fu2,*, Jiaqi Li1, Yunchuan Kong1, Kai-Zhi Bai3, Shun-Qing Shen3,†, and Di Xiao1,‡

    • *These authors contributed equally to this work.
    • †Contact author: sshen@hku.hk
    • ‡Contact author: xiaodi12@hisilicon.com

    Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 146602 – Published 6 April, 2026

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/jzjh-hbyj

    Abstract

    The interplay between topological materials and local symmetry breaking yields diverse topological quantum phenomena. A notable example is the parity-anomalous semimetal (PAS), which hosts a single unpaired gapless Dirac cone with a half-integer quantized Hall conductivity. Here, we realize this phase in a magnetic topological sandwich structure by applying an in-plane magnetic field. This configuration aligns the magnetization of one surface in plane while preserving a partially out-of-plane magnetization on the opposite surface, satisfying the condition for a gapless surface state near the Fermi level on only one surface. Our key evidence is a distinctive two-stage evolution of the conductivity tensor (σxy,σxx). The first stage culminates in the PAS at the fixed point [(e2/2h),m(e2/h)], where m≈0.6 corresponds to the minimal longitudinal conductivity of a single gapless Dirac cone of fermions on a two-dimensional lattice. This PAS state remains stabilized and is superposed with a gapped band flow in the second stage. This observation demonstrates that this state stabilized by the in-plane field resists localization—in contrast to conventional expectation for two-dimensional electron systems with broken time-reversal symmetry. The dynamic transition from an integer quantized Hall insulator to a half-integer quantized Hall semimetal establishes this material system as a versatile platform for exploring the physics of the parity anomaly.

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