Dirac surface states in intrinsic magnetic topological insulators EuSn2As2 and MnBi2Te4

In magnetic topological insulators (TIs), the interplay between magnetic order and nontrivial topology can induce fascinating topological quantum phenomena, such as the quantum anomalous Hall effect, chiral Majorana fermions and axion electrodynamics. Recently, a great deal of attention has been focused on the intrinsic magnetic TIs, where disorder effects can be eliminated to a large extent, which is expected to facilitate the emergence of topological quantum phenomena. In despite of intensive efforts, the experimental evidence of topological surface states (SSs) remains elusive. Here, by combining first-principles calculations and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) experiments, we have revealed that EnSn2As2 is an antiferromagnetic TI with observation of Dirac SSs consistent with our prediction. We also observed gapless Dirac SSs in another antiferromagnetic TI MnBi2Te4, which were missed in previous ARPES study. These results provide clear evidence for nontrivial topology of the two intrinsic magnetic TIs. Moreover, the topological SSs show no observable changes across the magnetic transitions within the experimental resolution, indicating that the magnetic order has limited effect on the topological SSs, which can be attributed to weak hybridization between the magnetic states and the topological electronic states. This provides insights for further studies that the correlations between magnetism and topological states need to be strengthened to induce larger gaps of the topological SSs, which will facilitate the realization of topological quantum phenomena at higher temperatures.