A fresh twist in chiral topology

Electrons in "chiral crystals", solid-state materials with definite "handedness", can behave in unexpected ways. An interdisciplinary team from research institutions in Germany and China has realized now a theoretically predicted peculiar electronic state in a chiral compound, PtGa, from the class of topological materials. The study which was published allows a fundamental understanding of the electronic properties of this novel semimetal. The concept of chirality is well-established in science: when an object cannot be superimposed on its mirror image, both the object and its mirror image are called chiral. In drug industry, for instance, more than 50% of the pharmaceutically active molecules used nowadays are chiral molecules. While one of the "enantiomers" is life-saving, its counterpart with opposite handedness may be poisonous. Another concept which has found widespread interest in contemporary materials science is topology as many so-called topological materials feature exotic properties.