Fractional power-law intraband optical conductivity in the low-dimensional Dirac material CaMnBi2

Abstract

We studied the broadband optical conductivity of CaMnBi2, a material with two-dimensional Dirac electronic bands, and found that both components of the intraband conductivity follow a universal power law as a function of frequency at low temperatures. This conductivity scaling differs from the Drude(-like) behavior, generally expected for free carriers, but matches the predictions for the intraband response of an electronic system in a quantum critical region. Since no other indications of quantum criticality are reported for CaMnBi2 so far, the cause of the observed unusual scaling remains an open question.