The integer quantum Hall effect is a topological state of quantum matter in two dimensions, and has recently been observed in three-dimensional topological insulator thin films. Here we study the Landau levels and edge states of surface Dirac fermions in topological insulators under strong magnetic field. We examine the formation of the quantum plateaux of the Hall conductance and find two different patterns, in one pattern the filling number covers all integers while only odd integers in the other. We focus on the quantum plateau closest to zero energy and demonstrate the breakdown of the quantum spin Hall effect resulting from structure inversion asymmetry. The phase diagrams of the quantum Hall states are presented as functions of magnetic field, gate voltage and chemical potential. This work establishes an intuitive picture of the edge states to understand the integer quantum Hall effect for Dirac electrons in topological insulator thin films.
We study spin conductivity of the surface states in a thin film of a topological insulator with Kubo formulas. Hybridization between the different sides of the film opens a gap at the Dirac point. We found that in the gapped region spin conductivity remains finite. In the gapless region near the band gap spin conductivity is enhanced. These findings make a thin film of a topological insulator as a promising material for spintronic applications.
We examine the magnetic field driven insulator-quantum Hall-insulator transitions of the two dimensional hole gas in a Ge/SiGe quantum well. We observe direct transitions between low and high magnetic field insulators and the $ν=1$ quantum Hall state. With increasing magnetic field, the transitions from insulating to quantum Hall and quantum Hall to insulating are very similar with respect to their transport properties. We address the temperature dependence around the transitions and show that the characteristic energy scale for the high field transition is larger.
Insulating substrates are crucial for electrical transport study and room temperature application of topological insulator films at thickness of only several nanometers. High quality quantum well films of Bi2Se3, a typical three-dimensional topological insulator, have been grown on α-Al2O3 (sapphire) (0001) by molecular beam epitaxy. The films exhibit well-defined quantum well states and surface states, suggesting the uniform thickness over macroscopic area. The Bi2Se3 thin films on sapphire (0001) provide a good system to study low-dimensional physics of topological insulators since conductio…
Transient reflectivity measurements of thin films, ranging from 6 to 40 nm in thickness, of the topological insulator Bi2Se3 revealed a strong dependence of the carrier relaxation time on the film thickness. For thicker films the relaxation dynamics are similar to those of bulk Bi2Se3, where the contribution of the bulk insulating phase dominates over that of the surface metallic phase. The carrier relaxation time shortens with decreasing film thickness, reaching values comparable to those of noble metals. This effect may result from the hybridization of Dirac cone states at the opposite surfa…
Axion insulator is an exotic magnetic topological insulator with zero Chern number but a nonzero quantized Chern-Simons magnetoelectric coupling. A conclusive experimental evidence for axion insulators is still lacking due to the small signal of topological magnetoelectric effect (TME). Here we show that the dynamical magnetoelectric coupling can be induced by the \emph{out-of-plane} surface magnetization dynamics in axion insulator thin films, which further generates a polarization current in the presence of an external magnetic field in the same direction. Such a current is finite in the bul…
In this review, we present a summary of some recent experiments on topological insulators (TIs) and superconducting nanowires and films. Electron-electron interaction (EEI), weak anti-localization (WAL) and anisotropic magneto-resistance (AMR) effect found in TI films by transport measurements are reported. Then, transport properties of superconducting films, bridges and nanowires and proximity effect in non-superconducting nanowires are described. Finally, the interplay between TIs and superconductors (SCs) is also discussed.
Intrinsic contribution to the spin Hall effect in a two-dimensional silicene is considered theoretically within the linear response theory and Green function formalism. When an external voltage normal to the silicene plane is applied, the spin Hall conductivity is shown to reveal a transition from the spin Hall insulator phase at low voltages to the conventional insulator phase at higher voltages. This transition resembles recently reported phase transition in a bilayer graphene. The spin-orbit interaction responsible for this transition in silicene is much stronger than in graphene, which sho…
The last several years have witnessed the rapid developments in the study and understanding of topological insulators. In this review, after a brief summary of the history of topological insulators, we focus on the recent progress made in transport experiments on topological insulator films and nanowires. Some quantum phenomena, including the weak antilocalization, the Aharonov Bohm effect and the Shubnikov de Haas oscillations, observed in these nanostructures are described. In addition, the electronic transport evidence of the superconducting proximity effect as well as an anomalous resistan…
The recently discovered topological Dirac semimetal represents a new exotic quantum state of matter. Topological Dirac semimetals can be viewed as three dimensional analogues of graphene, in which the Dirac nodes are protected by crystalline symmetry. It has been found that quantum confinement effect can gap out Dirac nodes and convert Dirac semimetal to a band insulator. The band insulator is either normal insulator or quantum spin Hall insulator depending on the thin film thickness. We present the study of disorder effects in thin film of Dirac semimetals. It is found that moderate Anderson …
We study responses to metric perturbation in topological insulator models. In this paper we introduce a novel quantity, Hall viscosity to particle density ratio, which is analogous to the viscosity to entropy ratio suggested by AdS/CFT correspondence. This quantity corresponds to the filling fraction which characterizes the quantum Hall states, and hence it could be discussed in Haldane's zero-field quantum Hall system. We also consider dissipationless viscosity in the time reversal invariant quantum spin Hall system, which is related to a spin current.
Statistics of level spacing and magnetization are studied for the phase diagram of the integer quantum Hall effect in a 2D finite lattice model with Anderson disorder.
We measured the response of the surface state spectrum of epitaxial Sb2Te3 thin films to applied gate electric fields by low temperature scanning tunneling microscopy. The gate dependent shift of the Fermi level and the screening effect from bulk carriers vary as a function of film thickness. We observed a gap opening at the Dirac point for films thinner than four quintuple layers, due to the coupling of the top and bottom surfaces. Moreover, the top surface state band gap of the three quintuple layer films was found to be tunable by back gate, indicating the possibility of observing a topolog…
We present a study of the proximity effect between a ferromagnet and a paramagnetic metal of varying disorder. Thin beryllium films are deposited onto a 5 nm-thick layer of the ferromagnetic insulator EuS. This bilayer arrangement induces an exchange field, $H_{ex}$, of a few tesla in low resistance Be films with sheet resistance $R\ll R_Q$, where $R_Q=h/e^2$ is the quantum resistance. We show that $H_{ex}$ survives in very high resistance films and, in fact, appears to be relatively insensitive to the Be disorder. We exploit this fact to produce a giant low-field magnetoresistance in the corr…
Topological insulators can exhibit strong magnetoelectric effects when their time-reversal symmetry is broken. In this Letter we consider the magneto-optical Kerr and Faraday effects of a topological insulator thin film weakly exchange-coupled to a ferromagnet. We find that its Faraday rotation has a universal value at low-frequencies, $θ_{\mathrm{F}} = \mathrm{tan}^{-1}\,α$ where $α$ is the vacuum fine structure constant, and that it has a giant Kerr rotation $θ_{\mathrm{K}} = π/2$. These properties follow from a delicate interplay between thin-film cavity confinement and the surface Hall con…
We determine the optical response of topological insulator thin films in the presence of a quantizing, external magnetic field. We explicitly take into account hybridization between the states of top and bottom surface. The interplay between hybridization and Zeeman energies gives rise to topological and normal insulator phases and phase transitions between them. The optical response in the two phases and at the phase transition point is investigated. We show that the difference in magneto-optical response can be used to distinguish the topological phase from the normal phase of the system. Fu…
We describe a new phase transition of the bilayer quantum Hall ferromagnet at filling fraction $ν= 1$. In the presence of static disorder (modeled by a periodic potential), bosonic $S=1/2$ spinons can undergo a superfluid-insulator transition while preserving the ferromagnetic order. The Mott insulating phase has an emergent U(1) photon, and the transition is between Higgs and Coulomb phases of this photon. Physical consequences for charge and counterflow conductivity, and for interlayer tunneling conductance in the presence of quenched disorder are discussed.
We study an unconventional quantum Hall effect for the surface states of ultrathin Floquet topological insulators in a perpendicular magnetic field. The resulting band structure is modified by photon dressing and the topological property is governed by the low-energy dynamics of a single surface. An exchange of symmetric and antisymmetric surface states occurs by reversing the light's polarization. We find a novel quantum Hall state in which the zeroth Landau level undergoes a phase transition from a trivial insulator state, with Hall conductivity $σ_{yx}=0$ at zero Fermi energy, to a Hall ins…
Fundamental insight into the nature of the quantum phase transition from a superconductor to an insulator in two dimensions, or from one plateau to the next or to an insulator in quantum Hall effect, has been revealed through the study of its scaling behavior. Here, we report on the experimental observation of a quantum phase transition from a quantum-anomalous-Hall (QAH) insulator to an Anderson insulator in a magnetic topological insulator by tuning the chemical potential. Our experiment demonstrates the existence of scaling behavior from which we extract the critical exponent for this quant…
We studied the insulator-quantum Hall conductor transition which separates the low-field insulator from the quantum Hall state of the filling factor $ν=4$ on a gated two-dimensional GaAs electron system containing self-assembled InAs quantum dots. To enter the $ν=4$ quantum Hall state directly from the low-field insulator, the two-dimensional system undergoes a crossover from the low-field localization to Landau quantization. The crossover, in fact, covers a wide range with respect to the magnetic field rather than only a small region near the critical point of the insulator-quantum Hall condu…
We theoretically show that the three-dimensional (3D) topological insulator (TI)/thin-film ferromagnetic metal (FMM) bilayer structure is possible to be a quantum anomalous Hall (QAH) insulator with a wide global band gap. Studying the band structure and the weight distributions of eigenstates, we demonstrate that the attachment of a metallic thin-film on the 3DTI can shift the topologically non-trivial state into the metal layers due to the hybridization of bands around the original Dirac point. By introducing the magnetic exchange interaction in the thin-film layers, we compute the anomalous…
We present numerical and analytical results for the optical and acoustic plasmon collective modes of coupled massless-Dirac two-dimensional electron systems. Our results apply to topological insulator (TI) thin films and to two graphene sheets separated by a thin dielectric barrier layer. We find that because of strong bulk dielectric screening TI acoustic modes are locked to the top of the particle-hole continuum and therefore probably unobservable.
Phase transitions between the quantum spin Hall and the insulator phases in three dimensions are studied. We find that in inversion-asymmetric systems there appears a gapless phase between the quantum spin Hall and insulator phases in three dimensions, which is in contrast with the two-dimensional case. Existence of this gapless phase stems from a topological nature of gapless points (diabolical points) in three dimensions, but not in two dimensions.
We investigate the current-induced spin-orbit torque in thin topological insulator (TI) films in the presence of hybridization between the top and bottom surface states. We formulate the relation between spin torque and TI thickness, from which we derived the optimal value of the thickness to maximize the torque. We show numerically that in typical TI thin films made of $\mathrm{Bi_2Se_3}$, the optimal thickness is about 3-5 nm.
We present an analytical scaling theory for localization in a two-dimensional hierarchical network model that is designed to represent phase-coherent electron transport in the quantum-Hall regime. Scaling expressions for both the longitudinal and Hall resistivities are derived. In agreement with recent numerical studies, we find that the Hall resistivity is quantized in the metallic phase but diverges in the insulating phase. This suggests that the characteristics of a quantized Hall insulator can occur only in the presence of a strong dephasing mechanism.
The phase transitions from one plateau to the next plateau or to an insulator in quantum Hall and quantum anomalous Hall (QAH) systems have revealed universal scaling behaviors. A magnetic-field-driven quantum phase transition from a QAH insulator to an axion insulator was recently demonstrated in magnetic topological insulator sandwich samples. Here, we show that the temperature dependence of the derivative of the longitudinal resistance on magnetic field at the transition point follows a characteristic power-law that indicates a universal scaling behavior for the QAH to axion insulator phase…
Electron spin-momentum locking together with background magnetic textures can significantly alter the electron transport properties. We theoretically investigate the electron transport at the interface between a topological insulator and a magnetic insulator with magnetic skyrmions on the top. In contrast to the conventional topological Hall effect in normal metals, the skyrmions yield an additional contribution to the anomalous Hall conductivity even in the absence of in-plane magnetic texture, arising from the phase factor characteristic to Dirac electrons acquired at skyrmion boundary.
Quantitative understanding of the relationship between quantum tunneling and Fermi surface spin polarization is key to device design using topological insulator surface states. By using spin-resolved photoemission spectroscopy with p-polarized light in topological insulator Bi2Se3 thin films across the metal-to-insulator transition, we observe that for a given film thickness, the spin polarization is large for momenta far from the center of the surface Brillouin zone. In addition, the polarization decreases significantly with enhanced tunneling realized systematically in thin insulating films,…
We have studied the tachyonic excitations in the junction of two topological insulators in the presence of an external magnetic field. The Landau levels, evaluated from an effective two-dimensional model for tachyons, and from the junction states of two topological insulators, show some unique properties not seen in conventional electrons systems or in graphene. The $ν=1/3$ fractional quantum Hall effect has also a strong presence in the tachyon system.
The mapping between the metal-insulator transition of the quantum Hall system and a superfluid-to-insulator transition is revisited based on a disordered anyon model. The one-parameter scaling of the superfluid-to-insulator transition is employed for the analysis of the scaling behavior of the integer quantum Hall transitions. The analysis reveals the direct transition from a quantum Hall plateau to the insulator in weak disorder limit, and a float-down transition for strong disorders. In either cases, the transition corresponds to a non-chirality superfluid-to-insulator transition, with the l…
This is a Reply to a Comment by Tanaka and Machida. We provide some details of the derivation of the effective field theory for integer quantum Hall transitions using the non-Abelian chiral anomaly.
We present the observation of a transverse thermopower, or Planar Nernst Effect, in patterned ultrathin film (8 nm) of La0.7Sr0.3MnO3 (LSMO) driven by heat current applied in-plane of the film and Planar Hall Effect (PHE) in the same LSMO ultrathin film with in-plane current of 100 microA is also investigated. Even for temperature difference of 5 K the Planar Nernst Effect in ultrathin film (8 nm) shows a coercivity of 3 Oe same as observed in Planar Hall Effect measurement and confirms the ferromagnetic nature of thin film. The angular dependence of transverse voltages shows four-fold sin{the…
Twisting the stacking of layered materials leads to rich new physics. A three dimensional (3D) topological insulator film host two dimensional gapless Dirac electrons on top and bottom surfaces, which, when the film is below some critical thickness, will hybridize and open a gap in the surface state structure. The hybridization gap can be tuned by various parameters such as film thickness, inversion symmetry, etc. according to the literature. The 3D strong topological insulator Bi(Sb)Se(Te) family have layered structures composed of quintuple layers (QL) stacked together by van der Waals inter…
The propagation of surface plasmon polaritons in thin films of topological insulators is studied. The materials considered are second generation three dimensional topological insulators Bi$_2$Se$_3$, Bi$_2$Te$_3$, and Sb$_2$Te$_3$. Dispersion relations and propagation lengths are estimated numerically, taking into account the variation of bulk dielectric functions of topological insulators as well as substrate using the Drude-Lorentz model. Key factors affecting propagation length are identified and ways to modify the dispersion relations are suggested. The explanation of the apparent discrepa…
Topological insulators (TI) have attracted extensive research effort due to their insulating bulk states but conducting surface states. However, investigation and understanding of thermal transport in topological insulators, particularly the effect of surface states are lacking. In this work, we studied thickness-dependent in-plane thermal conductivity of Bi2Te2Se TI thin films. A large enhancement of both thermal and electrical conductivity was observed for films with thicknesses below 20 nm, which is attributed to the surface states and bulk-insulating nature of these films. Surprisingly, a …
The electronic transport properties in magnetically doped ultra-thin films of topological-insulators is investigated by using Landauer-buttiker formalism. The chiral selective tunneling is addressed in such systems which leads to transport gap and as a consequence current blocking. This quantum blocking of transport occurs when the magnetic states with opposite chirality are aligned energetically. This can be obsereved when an electron tunnels through a barrier or well of magnetic potential induced by the exchange field. It is proved and demonstrated that this chiral transition rule fails when…
Understanding the spin-texture behavior of boundary modes in ultrathin topological insulator films is critically essential for the design and fabrication of functional nano-devices. Here by using spin-resolved photoemission spectroscopy with p-polarized light in topological insulator Bi2Se3 thin films, we report tunneling-dependent evolution of spin configuration in topological insulator thin films across the metal-to-insulator transition. We observe strongly binding energy- and wavevector-dependent spin polarization for the topological surface electrons in the ultra-thin gapped-Dirac-cone lim…
We study Coulomb drag between the top and bottom surfaces of topological insulator films. We derive a kinetic equation for the thin-film spin density matrix containing the full spin structure of the two-layer system, and analyze the electron-electron interaction in detail in order to recover all terms responsible for Coulomb drag. Focusing on typical topological insulator systems, with film thicknesses d up to 6 nm, we obtain numerical and approximate analytical results for the drag resistivity $ρ_\text{D}$ and find that $ρ_\text{D}$ is proportional to $T^2d^{-4}n^{-3/2}_{\text{a}}n^{-3/2}_{\t…
We have studied the fractional quantum Hall states on the surface of a topological insulator thin film in an external magnetic field, where the Dirac fermion nature of the charge carriers have been experimentally established only recently. Our studies indicate that the fractional quantum Hall states should indeed be observable in the surface Landau levels of a topological insulator. The strength of the effect will however be different, compared to that in graphene, due to the finite thickness of the topological insulator film and due to the admixture of Landau levels of the two surfaces of the…
Based on ab initio calculations, we predict that a monolayer of Cr-doped (Bi,Sb)2Te3 and GdI2 heterostructure is a quantum anomalous Hall insulator with a non-trivial band gap up to 38 meV. The principle behind our prediction is that the band inversion between two topologically trivial ferromagnetic insulators can result in a non-zero Chern number, which offers a better way to realize the quantum anomalous Hall state without random magnetic doping. In addition, a simple effective model is presented to describe the basic mechanism of spin polarized band inversion in this system. Moreover, we pr…
We report a current scaling study of a quantum phase transition between a quantum anomalous Hall insulator and a trivial insulator on the surface of a heterostructure film of magnetic topological insulators. The transition was observed by tilting the magnetization while measuring the Hall conductivity $σ_{xy}$. The transition curves of $σ_{xy}$ taken under various excitation currents cross each other at a single point, exemplifying a quantum critical behavior of the transition. The slopes of the transition curves follow a power law dependence of the excitation current, giving a scaling exponen…
We theoretically reveal the possibility of specular Andreev reflection in a thin film topological insulator normal-superconductor (N/S) junction in the presence of a gate electric field. The probability of specular Andreev reflection increases with the electric field, and electron-hole conversion with unit efficiency happens in a wide experimentally accessible range of the electric field. We show that perfect specular Andreev reflection can occur for all angles of incidence with a particular excitation energy value. In addition, we find that the thermal conductance of the structure displays ex…
Atomically flat thin films of topological insulator Bi2Se3 have been grown on double-layer graphene formed on 6H-SiC(0001) substrate by molecular beam epitaxy. By a combined study of reflection high energy electron diffraction and scanning tunneling microscopy, we identified the Se-rich condition and temperature criterion for layer-by-layer growth of epitaxial Bi2Se3 films. The as-grown films without doping exhibit a low defect density of 1.0\pm 0.2x1011/cm2, and become a bulk insulator at a thickness of 10 quintuple layers, as revealed by in situ angle resolved photoemission spectroscopy meas…
Transient reflectivity traces measured for nanometer-sized films of the topological insulator Bi2Se3 revealed GHz-range oscillations driven within the relaxation of hot carriers photoexcited with ultrashort laser pulses of 1.51 eV photon energy. These oscillations have been suggested to result from acoustic phonon dynamics, including coherent longitudinal acoustic phonons in the form of standing acoustic waves. An increase of oscillation frequency from ~35 to ~70 GHz with decreasing film thickness from 40 to 15 nm was attributed to the interplay between two different regimes employing travelin…
When charge current passes through a normal metal that exhibits spin Hall effect, spin accumulates at the edge of the sample in the transverse direction. We predict that this spin accumulation, or spin voltage, enables quantum tunneling of spin through an insulator or vacuum to reach a ferromagnet without transferring charge. In a normal metal/insulator/ferromagnetic insulator trilayer (such as Pt/oxide/YIG), the quantum tunneling explains the spin-transfer torque and spin pumping that exponentially decay with the thickness of the insulator. In a normal metal/insulator/ferromagnetic metal tril…
The original motivation of great interest to topological insulators was the hope to observe the quantum spin Hall effect. Therefore if a material is in the topological insulator state they frequently call it the quantum spin Hall state. However, despite impressive experimental results confirming the existence of the quantum spin Hall state, the quantum spin Hall effect has not yet been detected. After a short overview of what was originally suggested as the quantum spin Hall effect (quantum spin conductance determined by the topological Chern number) the paper analyzes the crucial role of the …
Negative longitudinal magnetoresistance, in the presence of an external magnetic field parallel to the direction of an applied current, has recently been experimentally verified in Weyl semimetals and topological insulators in the bulk conduction limit. The appearance of negative longitudinal magnetoresistance in topological semimetals is understood as an effect of chiral anomaly, whereas it is not well-defined in topological insulators. Another intriguing phenomenon, planar Hall effect - appearance of a transverse voltage in the plane of applied co-planar electric and magnetic fields not perf…
Magnon transport through a magnetic insulator can be controlled by current-biased heavy-metal gates that modulate the magnon conductivity via the magnon density. Here, we report nonlinear modulation effects in 10$\,$nm thick yttrium iron garnet (YIG) films. The modulation efficiency is larger than 40\%/mA. The spin transport signal at high DC current density (2.2$\times 10^{11}\,$A/m$^{2}$) saturates for a 400$\,$nm wide Pt gate, which indicates that even at high current levels a magnetic instability cannot be reached in spite of the high magnetic quality of the films.
We study the quantum Hall effect of Dirac fermions on the surface of a Wilson-Dirac type topological insulator thin film in the strong topological insulating phase. Although a magnetic field breaks time reversal symmetry of the bulk, the surface states can survive even in a strong field regime. We examine how the Landau levels of the surface states are affected by symmetry breaking perturbations.
We present a theoretical realization of quantum spin and quantum valley Hall effects in silicene. We show that combination of an electric field and intrinsic spin-orbit interaction leads to quantum phase transitions at the charge neutrality point. This phase transition from a two dimensional topological insulator to a trivial insulating state is accompanied by a quenching of the quantum spin Hall effect and the onset of a quantum valley Hall effect, providing a tool to experimentally tune the topological state of silicene. In contrast to graphene and other conventional topological insulators, …
We predict a magnetoresistance induced by the interfacial Rashba spin-orbit coupling in normal metal|ferromagnetic insulator bilayer. It depends on the angle between current and magnetization directions identically to the "spin Hall magnetoresistance" mechanism caused by a combined action of spin Hall and inverse spin Hall effects. Due to the identical phenomenology it is not obvious whether the magnetoresistance reported by Nakayama et al. is a bulk metal or interface effect. The interfacial Rashba induced magnetoresistance may be distinguished from the bulk metal spin Hall magnetoresistance …
Precessing magnetization in a thin film magnetic insulator pumps spins into adjacent metals; however, this phenomenon is not quantitatively understood. We present a theory for the dependence of spin-pumping on the transverse mode number and in-plane wave vector. For long-wavelength spin waves, the enhanced Gilbert damping for the transverse mode volume waves is twice that of the macrospin mode, and for surface modes, the enhancement can be ten or more times stronger. Spin-pumping is negligible for short-wavelength exchange spin waves. We corroborate our analytical theory with numerical calcula…
We determine the optical response of ultrathin film topological insulators in the presence of a quantizing external magnetic field taking into account both hybridization between surface states, broken inversion symmetry and explicit time reversal symmetry breaking by the magnetic field. We find that breaking of inversion symmetry in the system, which can be due to interaction with a substrate or electrical gating, results in Landau level crossings which lead to additional optical transition channels that were previously forbidden. We show that by tuning the hybridization and symmetry breaking …
With the recent observation of graphene-like Landau levels at the surface of topological insulators, the possibility of fractional quantum Hall effect, which is a fundamental signature of strong correlations, has become of interest. Some experiments have reported intra-Landau level structure that is suggestive of fractional quantum Hall effect. This paper discusses the feasibility of fractional quantum Hall effect from a theoretical perspective, and argues that while this effect should occur, ideally, in the $n=0$ and $|n|=1$ Landau levels, it is ruled out in higher $|n|$ Landau levels. Unlike…
We discuss possible topological phase transitions in Ge-based thin films of Ge(Bi$_x$Sb$_{1-x}$)$_2$Te$_4$ as a function of layer thickness and Bi concentration $x$ using the first principles density functional theory framework. The bulk material is a topological insulator at $x$ = 1.0 with a single Dirac cone surface state at the surface Brillouin zone center, whereas it is a trivial insulator at $x$ = 0. Through a systematic examination of the band topologies we predict that thin films of Ge(Bi$_x$Sb$_{1-x}$)$_2$Te$_4$ with $x$ = 0.6, 0.8 and 1.0 are candidates for two-dimensional (2D) topol…
We study the phase structure and Hall conductance quantization in weakly coupled multi-layer electron systems in the integer quantum Hall regime. We derive an effective field theory and perform a two-loop renormalization group calculation. It is shown that (i) finite interlayer tunnelings (however small) give rise to successive metallic and insulating phases and metal-insulator transitions in the unitary universality class. (ii) The Hall conductivity is not renormalized in the metallic phases in the 3D regime. (iii) The Hall conductances are quantized in the insulating phases. In the bulk quan…
We report on the optoelectronic properties of thin films of Bi2Se3 grown by molecular beam epitaxy. The films are patterned into circuits with typical extensions of tens of microns. In spatially resolved experiments, we observe submicron photocurrent patterns with positive and negative amplitude. The patterns are independent of the applied bias voltage, but they depend on the width of the circuits. We interpret the patterns to originate from a local photocurrent generation due to potential fluctuations.
Raman measurements of a Fano-type surface phonon mode associated with Dirac surface states (SS) in Bi2Se3 topological insulator thin films allowed an unambiguous determination of the electron-phonon coupling strength in Dirac SS as a function of film thickness ranging from 2 to 40 nm. A non-monotonic enhancement of the electron-phonon coupling strength with maximum for the 8 - 10 nm thick films was observed. The non-monotonicity is suggested to originate from plasmon-phonon coupling which enhances electron-phonon coupling when free carrier density in Dirac SS increases with decreasing film thi…
