Massive Dirac fermions and spin physics in an ultrathin film of topological insulator
By Hai-Zhou Lu, Wen-Yu Shan, W. Yao, Q. Niu, S. Shen. 2009
437 citations recorded by the source corpus.
We study transport and optical properties of the surface states which lie in the bulk energy gap of a thin-film topological insulator. When the film thickness is comparable with the surface state decay length into the bulk, the tunneling between the top and bottom surfaces opens an energy gap and form two degenerate massive Dirac hyperbolas. Spin dependent physics emerges in the surface bands which are vastly different from the bulk behavior. These include the surface spin Hall effects, spin dependent orbital magnetic moment, and spin dependent optical transition selection rule which allows optical spin injection. We show a topological quantum phase transition where the Chern number of the surface bands changes when varying the thickness of the thin film.
Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Condensed Matter Physics
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d6615622c06c99c0241dee5b893cadfa72a9aa45
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
- Y. Ando
- N. P. Armitage
- Shoucheng Zhang
- Xiao-Liang Qi
- K. Segawa
- R. V. Aguilar
- L. Bilbro
- Masatoshi Sato
In Condensed Matter Physics
- Y. Ando
- Shoucheng Zhang
- N. P. Armitage
- Xiao-Liang Qi
- R. V. Aguilar
- L. Bilbro
- Masatoshi Sato
- E. Witten
Citations in the corpus
- Unexpected mass acquisition of Dirac fermions at the quantum phase transition of a topological insulator (2011, methodology): “To quantify the magnitude of the Dirac gap, we use the theoretical surface-band dispersion to account for the finite mass ter”
- Topological insulators and superconductors (2010, background): “However, to obtain a better understanding of the physical origin of topological surface states, it is helpful to show how the surface states emerge from the effective model (31) (Linderet al., 2009; Liuet al., 2010; Lu et al., 2010; Zhanget al., 2009).”
- A sudden collapse in the transport lifetime across the topological phase transition in (Bi1−xInx)2Se3 (2012, background): “The possibility exists that this reflects the predicted oscillatory behavior between 2D topologically non-trivial and trivial states as a function of thickness[17, 18].”