Ferromagnetic helical nodal line and Kane-Mele spin-orbit coupling in kagome metal Fe3Sn2

The two-dimensional kagome lattice hosts Dirac fermions at its Brillouin zone corners K and K′, analogous to the honeycomb lattice. In the density functional theory electronic structure of ferromagnetic kagome metal Fe3Sn2, without spin-orbit coupling, we identify two energetically split helical nodal lines winding along z in the vicinity of K and K′ resulting from the trigonal stacking of the kagome layers. We find that hopping across A-A stacking introduces a layer splitting in energy while that across A-B stacking controls the momentum space amplitude of the helical nodal lines. We identify the latter to be one order of magnitude weaker than the former owing to the underlying d-orbital degrees of freedom. The effect of spin-orbit coupling is found to resemble that of a Kane-Mele term, where the nodal lines can either be fully gapped to quasi-two-dimensional massive Dirac fermions, or remain gapless at discrete Weyl points depending on the ferromagnetic moment orientation. Aside from numerically establishing Fe3Sn2 as a model Dirac kagome metal by clarifying the roles played by interplane coupling, our results provide insights into materials design of topological phases from the lattice point of view, where paradigmatic low dimensional lattice models often find realizations in crystalline materials with three-dimensional stacking. ©2022 American Physical Society