  Taken together and viewed holistically, recent theory, low temperature (T)
transport, photoelectron spectroscopy and quantum oscillation experiments have
built a very strong case that the paradigmatic mixed valence insulator SmB6 is
currently unique as a three-dimensional strongly correlated topological
insulator (TI). As such, its many-body T-dependent bulk gap brings an extra
richness to the physics beyond that of the weakly correlated TI materials. How
will the robust, symmetry-protected TI surface states evolve as the gap closes
with increasing T? For SmB6 exploiting this opportunity first requires
resolution of other important gap-related issues, its origin, its magnitude,
its T-dependence and its role in bulk transport. In this paper we report
detailed T-dependent angle resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES)
measurements that answer all these questions in a unified way.
