Title: Extremely high magnetoresistance and conductivity in the type-II Weyl semimetals WP2 and MoP2,
Abstract: The peculiar band structure of semimetals exhibiting Dirac and Weyl crossings
can lead to spectacular electronic properties such as large mobilities
accompanied by extremely high magnetoresistance. In particular, two closely
neighbouring Weyl points of the same chirality are protected from annihilation
by structural distortions or defects, thereby significantly reducing the
scattering probability between them. Here we present the electronic properties
of the transition metal diphosphides, WP2 and MoP2, that are type-II Weyl
semimetals with robust Weyl points. We present transport and angle resolved
photoemission spectroscopy measurements, and first principles calculations. Our
single crystals of WP2 display an extremely low residual low-temperature
resistivity of 3 nohm-cm accompanied by an enormous and highly anisotropic
magnetoresistance above 200 million % at 63 T and 2.5 K. These properties are
likely a consequence of the novel Weyl fermions expressed in this compound. We
observe a large suppression of charge carrier backscattering in WP2 from
transport measurements.