Observation of Fermi-Arc Spin Texture in TaAs.

We have investigated the spin texture of surface Fermi arcs in the recently discovered Weyl semimetal TaAs using spin- and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy. The experimental results demonstrate that the Fermi arcs are spin polarized. The measured spin texture fulfills the requirement of mirror and time-reversal symmetries and is well reproduced by our first-principles calculations, which gives strong evidence for the topologically nontrivial Weyl semimetal state in TaAs. The consistency between the experimental and calculated results further confirms the distribution of chirality of the Weyl nodes determined by first-principles calculations.

Raman scattering investigation of the quasi-one-dimensional superconductor Ta4Pd3Te16.

We have performed polarized Raman scattering measurements on the newly discovered superconductor Ta4Pd3Te16 (T(c) = 4.6 K). We observe 28 out of 33 Raman active modes, with frequencies in good accordance with first-principles calculations. Although most of the phonons observed vary only slightly with temperature and do not exhibit any asymmetric profile that would suggest strong electron-phonon coupling, the linewidth of the A(g) phonon mode at 89.9 cm(-1) shows an unconventional increase with temperature decreasing, which is possibly due to a charge-density-wave transition or the emergence of charge-density-wave fluctuations below a temperature estimated to fall in the 140-200 K range.