Silicene (a monolayer of silicon atoms) is a topological insulator, which undergoes a topological phase transition to a band insulator under an external electric field. The spin polarization is unique and opposite at the K and K' points due to the spin-orbit coupling. Accordingly, silicene exhibits a strong circular dichroism with respect to optical absorption, obeying a certain spin-valley selection rule. It is remarkable that this selection rule is drastically different between these two types of insulators owing to a band inversion taking place at the phase transition point. Hence we can tell experimentally whether silicene is in the topological or band insulator phase by circular dichroism. Furthermore the selection rule enables us to excite electrons with definite spin and valley indices by optical absorption. Photo-induced current is spin polarized, where the spin direction is different between the topological and band insulators. It is useful for future spintronics applications.
In the presence of extrinsic Rashba spin-orbit coupling, we find that silicene can host a new quantum anomalous Hall state with spin- and valley-polarized edge states, which can be effectively controlled by the exchange field and electric field. In this new state, the pair of nontrivial edge states reside in one specific valley and have a strong but opposite spin polarization. A distinctive feature of this new state is that both of the spin and valley index of the edge states can be switched by reversing the electric field. We also present a microscopic mechanism for the origination of the new…
Considering finite-temperature screened electron-impurity scattering, we present a kinetic equation approach to investigate transport properties of two-dimensional massive fermions in silicene. We find that the longitudinal conductivity is always nonvanishing when chemical potential lies within the energy gap. This residual conductivity arises from interband correlation and strongly depends on strength of electron-impurity scattering. We also clarify that the electron-impurity interaction makes substantial contributions to the spin- and valley-Hall conductivities, which, however, are almost in…
We study intrinsic DC spin and valley Hall conductivity in doped ferromagnetic silicene in the presence of an electric filed applied perpendicular to silicene sheet. By calculating its energy spectrum and wavefunction and by making use of Kubo formalism, we obtain a general relation for the transverse Hall conductivity which can be used to obtain spin- and valley-Hall conductivity. Our results, in the zero limit of the exchange field, reduces to the previous results. Furthermore we discuss electrically tunable spin and valley polarized transport in ferromagnetic silicene and obtain the necessa…
The electronic properties of the novel two dimensional (2D) material silicene are strongly influenced by the application of a perpendicular electric field $E_z$ and of an exchange field $M$ due to adatoms positioned on the surface or a ferromagnetic substrate. Within the random phase approximation, we investigate how electron-electron interactions are affected by these fields and present analytical and numerical results for the dispersion of plasmons, their lifetime, and their oscillator strength. We find that the combination of the fields $E_z$ and $M$ brings a spin and valley texture to the …
We study ballistic transport of Dirac electrons through a strip in silicene, when the strip is exposed to off-resonant circularly polarized light and an electric field applied perpendicular to the silicene plane. We show that the conductance through the strip is spin- or/and valley-polarized. This can be explained by spin-valley coupling in silicene, and modification of its band structure through virtual absorption/emission processes and also by the perpendicular electric field. The spin- (valley-) polarization can be enhanced by tuning the light intensity and the value of the perpendicular el…
Silicene and germanene are key materials for the field of valleytronics. However, interaction with the substrate, which is necessary to support the electronically active medium, becomes a major obstacle. In the present work, we propose a substrate (F-doped WS$_2$) that avoids detrimental effects and at the same time induces the required valley polarization, so that no further steps are needed for this purpose. The behavior is explained by proximity effects on silicene/germanene, as demonstrated by first-principles calculations. Broken inversion symmetry due to the presence of WS$_2$ opens a su…
We propose an experimental scheme to realize adiabatic topological spin and valley pumping by using silicene subject to an in-plane $ac$ electric field with amplitude $E_{y}$ and a vertical electric field consisting of an electrostatic component and an $ac$ component with amplitudes $E_{z}^{0}$ and $E_{z}^{1}$. By tuning $E_{z}^{0}$ and $E_{z}^{1}$, topological valley pumping or spin-valley pumping can be achieved. The noisefree valley and spin currents generated could be useful in valleytronic and spintronic applications. This work demonstrates that bulk topological spin or valley pumping is …
We investigate charge conductance and spin and valley polarization along with the tunnelling magneto-resistance (TMR) in silicene junctions composed of normal silicene and ferromagnetic silicene. We show distinct features of the conductances for parallel and anti-parallel spin configurations and the TMR, as the ferromagnetic-normal-ferromagnetic (FNF) junction is tuned by an external electric field. We analyse the behavior of the charge conductance and valley and spin polarizations in terms of the independent conductances of the different spins at the two valleys and the band structure of ferr…
We study spin-valley and lattice-pseudo spin currents in a dual ferromagnetic-gated silicene-based junction. Silicene has buckled atomic structure which allows us to take sublattice-dependent ferromagnetism into account in the investigation. One of the study results show that transmission at the junctions exhibits anisotropic property only in anti-parallel cases. Interestingly, the studied junctions can be switched from a pure spin-polarizer to a pure valley-polarizer by reversing directions of exchange fields in the parallel junctions. The perfect control of spin-valley currents can be done o…
We investigate the Goos-Hänchen shift for ballistic electrons (i) reflected from a step-like inhomogeneity of the potential energy and (or) effective mass, and (ii) transmitted through a ferromagnetic barrier region in monolayer silicene or gapped graphene. For the electrons reflected from a single interface we found that the Goos-Hänchen shift is valley-polarized for gapped graphene structure, and valley- and spin-polarized for silicene due to the spin-valley coupling. Incontrast, for example, to gapless graphene the lateral beam shift in gapped structures occurs not only in the case of total…
We adopt the tight-binding mode-matching method to study the strain effect on silicene heterojunctions. It is found that valley- and spin-dependent separation of electrons cannot be achieved by the electric field only. When a strain and an electric field are simultaneously applied to the central scattering region, not only are the electrons of valleys K and K' separated into two distinct transmission lobes in opposite transverse directions, but the up-spin and down-spin electrons will also move in the two opposite transverse directions. Therefore, one can realize an effective modulation of val…
We study massive Dirac fermion tunneling through time periodic potential in a silicene-based N-TP-N junction, where Ns are normal silicene regions and TP is the time periodic potential barrier. The fermions would absorb or emit photons due to the presence of the Floquet sidebands created in the TP. The nearly perfect spin-valley-sideband filtering is predicted. Applying only the exchange field leads to just only the electron absorbing a single photon almost purely allowed to tunnel through the junction for the large electric field. Reversing direction of electric field can select spin of the a…
In this work the magnetic oscillations (MO) in pristine silicene at $T=0$ K are studied. Considering a constant electron density we obtain analytical expressions for the ground state internal energy and magnetization, under a perpendicular electric and magnetic field, taking in consideration the Zeeman effect. It is found that the MO are sawtooth-like, depending on the change in the last occupied energy level. This leads us to a classification of the MO peaks in terms of the Landau level (LL), valley or spin changes. Using this classification we analyze the MO for different values of the elect…
We study single and double quantum dots defined electrostatically within silicene. The spin-valley structure of the confined single- and two-electron system is determined and the effects of the intervalley scattering induced by the crystal edge and the Coulomb interaction are quantified. The states in a double quantum system are discussed in the context of the spatial symmetry of the single- and two-electron extended orbitals. We determine the charge, spin and valley transitions times induced by alternate electric fields of the microwave frequency. The valley transition times can be controlled…
Magnetic silicene superlattices (MSSLs) are versatile structures with spin-valley polarization and tunneling magnetoresistance (TMR) capabilities. However, the oscillating transport properties related to the superlattice periodicity impede stable spin-valley polarization states reachable by reversing the magnetization direction. Here, we show that aperiodicity can be used to improve the spin-valley polarization and TMR by reducing the characteristic conductance oscillations of periodic MSSLs (P-MSSLs). Using the Landauer-Büttiker formalism and the transfer matrix method, we investigate the spi…
We propose a highly efficient silicene device for dual spin and valley filtering. The device consists of two different barrier regions: the first is a region under uniaxial strain, with an exchange field induced by adjacent top and bottom magnetic insulators, while the second comprises of two ferromagnetic stripes which produces a delta-function fringe magnetic field, and a gate electrode to modify the electrochemical potential. For the first region, we investigated the effect of the uniaxial strain in inducing angular separation of the two valley spins in momentum-space, and further spin sepa…
We consider states bound at the flip of the electric field in buckled silicene. Along the electric flip lines a topological confinement is formed with the orientation of the charge current and the resulting magnetic dipole moment determined by the valley index. We compare the topological confinement to the trivial one that is due to a local reduction of the vertical electric field but without energy gap inversion. For the latter the valley does not protect the orientation of the magnetic dipole moment from inversion by external magnetic field. We demonstrate that the topologically confined sta…
We study a cluster of quantum dots defined within silicene that host confined electron states with spin and valley degrees of freedom. Atomistic tight-binding and continuum Dirac approximation are applied for few-electron system in quest for spontaneous valley polarization driven by inter-dot tunneling and electron-electron interaction, i.e. a valley counterpart of itinerary Nagaoka ferromagnetic ordering recently identified in GaAs square cluster of quantum dots with three excess electrons [P. Dehollain, {\it et al.}, Nature {\bf 579}, 528 (2020)]. We find that for Hamiltonian without intrins…
We study the hybrid excitations due to the coupling between surface optical phonons of a polar insulator substrate and plasmons in the valley-spin-polarized metal phase of silicene under an exchange field. We perform the calculations within the generalized random-phase approximation where the plasmon-phonon coupling is taken into account by the long-range Fr$\ddot{\mathrm{o}}$hlich interaction. Our investigation on two hybridized plasmon branches in different spin and valley subbands shows distinct behavior compared to the uncoupled case. Interestingly, in one valley, it is found that while th…
We theoretically demonstrate a simple way to significantly enhance the spin/valley polarizations and tunnel- ing magnetoresistnace (TMR) in a ferromagnetic-normal-ferromagnetic (FNF) silicene junction by applying a circularly polarized light in off-resonant regime to the second ferromagnetic (FM) region. We show that the fully spin-polarized current can be realized in certain ranges of light intensity. Increasing the incident energy in the presence of light will induce a transition of perfect spin polarization from positive to negative or vice versa depending on magnetic configuration (paralle…
The role of staggered potential on light-induced spin and pseudo-spin polarization has been investigated in silicene. It has been shown that non-equilibrium spin and pseudo-spin polarizations are emerged in silicene sheet by applying an external perpendicular electric field in the presence of circularly polarized light emission. This electric field results in pseudo-spin resolved states very close to the Dirac points therefore could be considered as a pseudomagnetic field. It has been shown that staggered potential induced spin-valley locking and pseudo-spin resolved bands are responsible for …
We study ballistic transport of Dirac fermions in silicene through arrays of barriers, of width $d$, in the presence of an exchange field $M$ and a tunable potential of height $U$ or depth $-U$. The spin- and valley-resolved conductances as functions of $U$ or $M$, exhibit resonances away from the Dirac point (DP) and close to it a pronounced dip that becomes a gap when a critical electric field $E_z$ is applied. This gap widens by increasing the number of barriers and can be used to realize electric field-controlled switching of the current. The spin $p_s$ and valley $p_v$ polarizations of th…
We investigate the anomalous effects due to the Berry correction and the considerable perturbations in the silicene-like hexagonal lattice system. The Berry curvature in periodic Bloch band system which related to the electromagnetic field is explored, the induced transverse anomalous velocity gives rise to the intrinsic Hall conductivity (without the vertex correction) expecially in the quantum anomalous Hall phase. The quantum anomalous Hall effect which related to the anomalous velocity term is detected, including the band avoided corssing effect and the generated special band gap. %{Enlarg…
We investigate van der Waals (vdW) heterostructures made of germanene, stanene or silicene with hexagonal Boron Nitride (h-BN). The intriguing topological properties of these buckled honeycomb materials can be maintained and further engineered in the heterostructures, where the competition between the substrate effect and external electric fields can be used to control the tunable topological phase transitions. Using such heterostructures as building blocks, various vdW topological domain walls (DW) are designed, along which there exist valley polarized quantum spin Hall edge states or valley-…
We study the polarization dependence of optical absorption for the modified Haldane model, which exhibits antichiral edge modes in presence of sample boundaries and has been argued to be realizable in transition metal dichalcogenides or Weyl semimetals. A rich optical phase diagram is unveiled, in which the correlations between perfect circular dichroism, pseudospin and valley polarization can be tuned independently upon varying the Fermi energy. Importantly, perfect circular dichroism and valley polarization are achieved simultaneously. This unprecedented combination of optical properties sug…
We carry out both the tight-binding model and the $ab\ initio$ to study the layered silicene, the spin, valley, sublattice degrees of freedom are taken into consider and the effects of electric field, magnetic field, and even the light in finite frequency together with its interesting optical propertice, which are all closely related to the spin-orbit coupling and Rashba coupling and lead to the tunable phase transitions (between the nontrivial topological phase which has nonzero Chern number or nonzero spin Chern number and the trivial phase). An exotic quantum anomalous Hall insulator phase …
Silicene systems, due to the buckled structure of the lattice, manifest remarkable intrinsic spin-orbit interaction triggering a topological phase transition in the low-energy regime. Thus, we found that protected edge states are present in silicene antidots and dots, being polarized in valley-spin pairs. We have also studied the effect of the lattice termination on the properties of the single electron energy levels and electron density distribution of silicene antidots and dots situated in a perpendicular magnetic field. Our calculations confirmed that the topological edge states are propaga…
Silicene is a competitive and promising 2D material, possessing interesting topological, electronic and optical properties. The presence of strong spin orbit interaction in silicene and its analogues, germanene and tinene, leads to the opening of a gap in the energy spectrum and spin-splitting of the bands in each valley. We develop a general method to determine the magneto-optic response of silicene, when a Gaussian beam is incident on silicene grown on a dielectric substrate in the presence of a static magnetic field. We use a semiclassical treatment of silicene monolayer to describe the Far…
We have measured the far-infrared reflectivity and Kerr angle spectra on a high-quality crystal of pure semimetallic bismuth as a function of magnetic field, from which we extract the conductivity for left- and right handed circular polarisations. The high spectral resolution allows us to separate the intraband Landau level transitions for electrons and holes. The hole transition exhibits 100% magnetic circular dichroism, it appears only for one polarisation as expected for a circular cyclotron orbit. However the dichroism for electron transitions is reduced to only $13\pm 1$%, which is quanti…
We report the recent progress on the theoretical aspects of monolayer topological insulators including silicene, germanene and stanene, which are monolayer honeycomb structures of silicon, germanium and tin, respectively. They show quantum spin Hall effects in nature due to the spin orbit interaction. The band gap can be tuned by applying perpendicular electric field, which induces a topological phase transition. We also analyze the topological properties of generic honeycomb systems together with the classification of topological insulators. Phase diagram of topological insulators and superco…
We theoretically investigated two kinds of density oscillations: the Friedel oscillation and collective excitation in the silicene and germanene within random phase approximation, and found that the tunable spin-valley coupled band structure could lead to some exotic properties in such two phenomena. Based on the exact analytical and numerical analysis, we demonstrated that the beating of screened potential as well as the undamped plasmon mode can be taken as fingerprints of topological phase transition in doped silicene and doped germanene. Thus our proposal here establishes the connection be…
We explore the temperature-dependent plasmonic modes of an n-doped double-layer silicene system which is composed of two spatially separated single layers of silicene with a distance large enough to prevent the interlayer electron tunneling. By applying an externally applied electric field, we numerically obtain the poles of the loss function within the so-called random phase approximation, to investigate the effects of temperature and geometry on the plasmon branches in three different regimes: topological insulator, valley-spin polarized metal, and band insulator. Also, we present the finite…
We propose a tunable topological Josephson junction in silicene where electrostatic gates could switch between a trivial and a topological junction. These aspects are a consequence of a tunable phase transition of the topologically confined valley-chiral states from a spin-degenerate to a spin-helical regime. We calculate the Andreev bound states in such a junction analytically using a low-energy approximation to the tight-binding model of silicene in proximity to s-wave superconductors as well as numerically in the short- and long-junction regime and in the presence of intervalley scattering.…
Silicene and related buckled materials are distinct from both the conventional two dimensional electron gas and the famous graphene due to strong spin orbit coupling and the buckled structure. These materials have potential to overcome limitations encountered for graphene, in particular the zero band gap and weak spin orbit coupling. We present a theoretical realization of quantum capacitance which has advantages over the scattering problems of traditional transport measurements. We derive and discuss quantum capacitance as a function of the Fermi energy and temperature taking into account ele…
