Title: Two-channel conduction in YbPtBi,
Abstract: We investigated transport, magnetotransport, and broadband optical properties
of the half-Heusler compound YbPtBi. Hall measurements evidence two types of
charge carriers: highly mobile electrons with a temperature-dependent
concentration and low-mobile holes; their concentration stays almost constant
within the investigated temperature range from 2.5 to 300 K. The optical
spectra (10 meV - 2.7 eV) can be naturally decomposed into contributions from
intra- and interband absorption processes, the former manifesting themselves as
two Drude bands with very different scattering rates, corresponding to the
charges with different mobilities. These results of the optical measurements
allow us to separate the contributions from electrons and holes to the total
conductivity and to implement a two-channel-conduction model for description of
the magnetotransport data. In this approach, the electron and hole mobilities
are found to be around 50000 and 10 cm$^{2}$/Vs at the lowest temperatures (2.5
K), respectively.