Title: Pressure-induced Superconductivity in the Three-component Fermion Topological Semimetal Molybdenum Phosphide,
Abstract: Topological semimetal, a novel state of quantum matter hosting exotic
emergent quantum phenomena dictated by the non-trivial band topology, has
emerged as a new frontier in condensed-matter physics. Very recently, a
coexistence of triply degenerate points of band crossing and Weyl points near
the Fermi level was theoretically predicted and immediately experimentally
verified in single crystalline molybdenum phosphide (MoP). Here we show in this
material the high-pressure electronic transport and synchrotron X-ray
diffraction (XRD) measurements, combined with density functional theory (DFT)
calculations. We report the emergence of pressure-induced superconductivity in
MoP with a critical temperature Tc of about 2 K at 27.6 GPa, rising to 3.7 K at
the highest pressure of 95.0 GPa studied. No structural phase transitions is
detected up to 60.6 GPa from the XRD. Meanwhile, the Weyl points and triply
degenerate points topologically protected by the crystal symmetry are retained
at high pressure as revealed by our DFT calculations. The coexistence of
three-component fermion and superconductivity in heavily pressurized MoP offers
an excellent platform to study the interplay between topological phase of
matter and superconductivity.