Hedgehog spin texture and Berry’s phase tuning in a magnetic topological insulator

By Su-Yang Xu, M. Neupane, Chang Liu, Duming Zhang, Anthony Richardella, L. Wray, N. Alidoust, M. Leandersson, T. Balasubramanian, J. S'anchez-Barriga and 11 more. Nature Physics, 2012

328 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Understanding and control of spin degrees of freedom on the surfaces of topological materials are key to future applications as well as for realizing novel physics such as the axion electrodynamics associated with time-reversal (TR) symmetry breaking on the surface. We experimentally demonstrate magnetically induced spin reorientation phenomena simultaneous with a Dirac-metal to gapped-insulator transition on the surfaces of manganese-doped Bi2Se3 thin films. The resulting electronic groundstate exhibits unique hedgehog-like spin textures at low energies, which directly demonstrate the mechanics of TR symmetry breaking on the surface. We further show that an insulating gap induced by quantum tunnelling between surfaces exhibits spin texture modulation at low energies but respects TR invariance. These spin phenomena and the control of their Fermi surface geometrical phase first demonstrated in our experiments pave the way for the future realization of many predicted exotic magnetic phenomena of topological origin. Breaking the time-reversal symmetry of the surface states of topological insulators is predicted to produce many exotic and potentially useful phenomena. Spin-resolved angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy spectra reveal that magnetic dopants can induce such symmetry breaking in Be2Se3 thin films.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Condensed Matter Physics, Materials Chemistry

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/973204ba15654c1e4ea5062c9ea937fbce162099

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

In Condensed Matter Physics

In Materials Chemistry

Citations in the corpus

Momentum-space imaging of Cooper pairing in a half-Dirac-gas topological superconductor (2014, background): “Our spin-resolved measurements confirm that the surface states are indeed singly degenerate near the Fermi level, which is at an energy level far away from the hybridization gap (v·kF > ∆hybr) [26, 27].”
Z2Pack: Numerical Implementation of Hybrid Wannier Centers for Identifying Topological Materials (2016, background): “[106] Su-Yang Xu, Madhab Neupane, Chang Liu, Duming Zhang, Anthony Richardella, L Andrew Wray, Nasser Alidoust, Mats Leandersson, Thiagarajan Balasubramanian, Jaime Sánchez-Barriga, et al.”
Gapless Surface Dirac Cone in Antiferromagnetic Topological Insulator MnBi2Te4 (2019, neutral): “topological era in condensed matter physics [1–3].”
Angle-resolved photoemission studies of quantum materials (2020, neutral): “No out-of-plane spin component was observed for systems doped with non-magnetic impurities (Xu et al., 2012c).”