One-dimensional topological edge states of bismuth bilayers
By I. Drozdov, A. Alexandradinata, Sangjun Jeon, S. Nadj-Perge, H. Ji, R. Cava, Bogdan Andrei Bernevig, A. Yazdani. Nature Physics, 2014
381 citations recorded by the source corpus.
The hallmark of a topologically insulating state of matter in two dimensions protected by time-reversal symmetry is the existence of chiral edge modes propagating along the perimeter of the sample. Among the first systems predicted to be a two-dimensional topological insulator are bilayers of bismuth. Here we report scanning tunnelling microscopy experiments on bulk Bi crystals that show that a subset of the predicted Bi-bilayers’ edge states are decoupled from the states of the substrate and provide direct spectroscopic evidence of their one-dimensional nature. Moreover, by visualizing the quantum interference of edge-mode quasi-particles in confined geometries, we demonstrate their remarkable coherent propagation along the edge with scattering properties consistent with strong suppression of backscattering as predicted for the propagating topological edge states. The conducting surface states of 3D topological insulators are two-dimensional. In an analogous way, the edge states of 2D topological insulators are one-dimensional. Direct evidence of this one-dimensionality is now presented, by means of scanning tunnelling spectroscopy, for bismuth bilayers—one of the first theoretically predicted 2D topological insulators.
Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Condensed Matter Physics, Materials Chemistry
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5bb91c1935f19b9537093ffbd6b4c3af155fc90d
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In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics
In Condensed Matter Physics
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Citations in the corpus
- Evidence for Topological Edge States in a Large Energy Gap near the Step Edges on the Surface of ZrTe 5 (2016, background): “Such topological edge states have been observed on the surfaces of Bi and Bi14Rh3I9 crystals [22,23], but still with an undesired finite DOS inside the energy gap in the area away from the step edges.”