Paper detail

Thermopower and Unconventional Nernst in the Predicted Type-II Weyl Semi-metal WTe$_2$

WTe$_2$ is one of a series of recently discovered high mobility semimetals, some of whose properties are characteristic of topological Dirac or Weyl metals. One of its most interesting properties is the unsaturated giant magnetoresistance that it exhibits at low temperatures. An important question is the degree to which this property can be ascribed to a conventional semi-metallic model in which a highly compensated, high mobility metal exhibits large magnetoresistance. Here we show that the longitudinal thermopower (Seebeck effect) of semi-metallic WTe$_2$ exfoliated flakes exhibits periodic sign changes about zero with increasing magnetic field that indicates distinct electron and hole Landau levels and nearly fully compensated electron and hole carrier densities. However, inconsistent with a conventional semi-metallic picture, we find a rapid enhancement of the Nernst effect at low temperatures that is nonlinear in magnetic field, which is consistent with Weyl points in proximity to the Fermi energy. Hence, we demonstrate the role played by the Weyl character of WTe$_2$ in its transport properties.