Discovery of topological nodal-line fermionic phase in a magnetic material GdSbTe*

Topological Dirac semimetals with accidental band touching between conduction and valence bands protected by time reversal and inversion symmetry are at the frontier of modern condensed matter research. Most of the discovered topological semimetals are nonmagnetic and conserve time-reversal symmetry. Here we report the experimental discovery of an antiferromagnetic topological nodal-line semimetallic state in GdSbTe using angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy. Our systematic study reveals the detailed electronic structure of the paramagnetic state of antiferromagnetic GdSbTe. We observe the nodal-line state along the Γ-M direction of the Brillouin zone (BZ). Interestingly, our experimental data show a robust Dirac like state at the X point of the BZ both below and above the magnetic transition temperature (T_N = 13 K). Having a relatively high transition temperature, GdSbTe provides an archetypical platform to study the interaction between magnetism and topological states of matter.