Magneto-infrared spectroscopy of Landau levels and Zeeman splitting of three-dimensional massless Dirac Fermions in ZrTe$_5$

We present a magneto-infrared spectroscopy study on a newly identified three-dimensional (3D) Dirac semimetal ZrTe$_5$. We observe clear transitions between Landau levels and their further splitting under magnetic field. Both the sequence of transitions and their field dependence follow quantitatively the relation expected for 3D \emph{massless} Dirac fermions. The measurement also reveals an exceptionally low magnetic field needed to drive the compound into its quantum limit, demonstrating that ZrTe$_5$ is an extremely clean system and ideal platform for studying 3D Dirac fermions. The splitting of the Landau levels provides a direct and bulk spectroscopic evidence that a relatively weak magnetic field can produce a sizeable Zeeman effect on the 3D Dirac fermions, which lifts the spin degeneracy of Landau levels. Our analysis indicates that the compound evolves from a Dirac semimetal into a topological line-node semimetal under current magnetic field configuration. Refs: R. Y. Chen et al., Phys. Rev. B 92, 075107 (2015); R. Y. Chen et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 176404 (2015).