Abstract Planar tunneling spectroscopy of the Kondo insulator SmB6 suggests that an interaction between the surface Dirac fermions and the bulk spin excitons results in incompletely protected topological surface states. To gain further insight into their true nature, it is necessary to study other topological Kondo insulator candidates. Calculations of electronic energy bands predict that the Kondo insulator YbB12 hosts topological surface states protected by crystalline mirror symmetry.
