Current at a distance in the Dirac semimetal ZrTe₅

Non-local electronic conductivity in Dirac and Weyl semimetals has been predicted to arise from charge pumping in the bulk due to the chiral anomaly, and from cyclotron-like orbits of surface Fermi arcs weaving together with bulk states. We used focused ion beam (FIB) milling to thin samples of the Dirac semimetal ZrTe₅ to sub-μm thicknesses, and we created electrical devices with these samples to probe these two non-local conductivity mechanisms. We will discuss difficulties we encountered using FIB and methods we tried in order to overcome them, and we will describe experiments we undertook to detect non-local conduction.