Quantized topological magnetoelectric effect of the zero-plateau quantum anomalous Hall state

By Jing Wang, Biao Lian, Xiao-Liang Qi, Shoucheng Zhang. 2015

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The topological magnetoelectric effect in a three-dimensional topological insulator is a novel phenomenon, where an electric field induces a magnetic field in the same direction, with a universal coefficient of proportionality quantized in units of $e²/2h$. Here in this paper, we propose that the topological magnetoelectric effect can be realized in the zero-plateau quantum anomalous Hall state of magnetic topological insulators or a ferromagnet-topological insulator heterostructure. The finite-size effect is also studied numerically, where the magnetoelectric coefficient is shown to converge to a quantized value when the thickness of the topological insulator film increases. We further propose a device setup to eliminate nontopological contributions from the side surface.

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

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c1e48e7f7ddf74aef3625cbc1a33d529cbdc8dab