We demonstrate evidences of electronic transport via topological Dirac surface states in a thin film of strained HgTe. At high perpendicular magnetic fields, we show that the electron transport reaches the quantum Hall regime with vanishing resistance. Furthermore, quantum Hall transport spectroscopy reveals energy splittings of relativistic Landau levels specific to coupled Dirac surface states. This study provides new insights in the quantum Hall effect of topological insulator (TI) slabs, in the cross-over regime between two- and three-dimensional TIs, and in the relevance of thin TI films to explore novel circuit functionalities in spintronics and quantum nanoelectronics.
We report on the study of magneto-photogalvanic and magnetotransport phenomena in 200 nm partially strained HgTe films. This thickness is slightly larger than the estimated critical thickness of lattice relaxation leaving the film partially relaxed with the value of the energy gap close to zero. We show that illumination of HgTe films with monochromatic terahertz laser radiation results in a giant resonant photocurrent caused by the cyclotron resonance in the surface states. The resonant photocurrent is also detected in the reference fully strained 80 nm HgTe films previously shown to be fully…
Josephson supercurrent through the topological surface states of strained bulk HgTe
应变块体HgTe是一种三维拓扑绝缘体，其表面电子具有高迁移率（30，000 cm ^2/Vs），而其块体实际上不含移动载流子。这些特性使研究运输通过其非常规的表面状态，而不会受到阻碍的平行体电导。在这里，我们展示了基于碲化汞的约瑟夫森结的传输实验，以调查预测的Majorana状态的外观在拓扑绝缘体和超导体之间的界面。有趣的是，我们观察到一个无耗散的超电流流过HgTe的拓扑表面态。的电流-电压特性是滞后的温度低于1 K的临界几微安的超电流。此外，我们观察到一个磁场诱导的临界超电流的夫琅和费图案，表明在非常规的表面态占主导地位的2π周期约瑟夫森效应。我们的研究结果表明，应变HgTe是一种很有前途的材料系统，可以更好地理解拓扑表面态的约瑟夫森效应，并在输运实验中寻找零能Majorana态的表现。
We report on a detailed study of the terahertz (THz) photoresistivity in a strained HgTe three-dimensional topological insulator (3D TI) for all Fermi level positions: inside the conduction and valence bands, and in the bulk gap. In the presence of a magnetic field we detect a resonance corresponding to the cyclotron resonance (CR) in the top surface Dirac fermions (DF) and examine the nontrivial dependence of the surface state cyclotron mass on the Fermi level position. We also detect additional resonant features at moderate electron densities and demonstrate that they are caused by the mixin…
Magneto-transport measurements on gated high mobility heterostructures containing a 60 nm layer of tensile strained HgTe, a three-dimensional topological insulator, show well-developed Hall quantization from surface states both in the n- as well as in the p-type regime. While the n-type behavior is due to transport in the topological surface state of the material, we find from 8-orbital k.p calculations that the p-type transport results from massive Volkov-Pankratov states. Their formation prevents the Dirac point and thus the p-conducting topological surface state from being accessible in tra…
We theoretically study the thermoelectric transport properties of strained HgTe in the topological insulator phase. We developed a model for the system using a Dirac Hamiltonian including the effect of strain induced by the interface between HgTe and the CdTe substrate. The conductivity tensor was explored assuming the electrons are scattered by charge impurities, while the thermopower tensor was addressed using the Mott relation. Seebeck and Nernst responses exhibit remarkable enhancements in comparison with other two-dimensional Dirac materials, such as graphene, germanane, prosphorene and s…
Preceded by the discovery of topological insulators, Dirac and Weyl semimetals have become a pivotal direction of research in contemporary condensed matter physics. While easily accessible from a theoretical viewpoint, these topological semimetals pose a serious challenge in terms of experimental synthesis and analysis to allow for their unambiguous identification. In this work, we report on detailed transport experiments on compressively strained HgTe. Due to the superior sample quality in comparison to other topological semimetallic materials, this enables us to resolve the interplay of topo…
Anisotropic sub-band splitting mechanisms in strained HgTe: a first principles study
Universität Würzburg（维尔茨堡大学）；Institute for Topological Insulators（拓扑绝缘体研究所）；Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, The University of Chicago（芝加哥大学普里茨克分子工程学院）；University of Trento（特伦托大学）；Università degli Studi dell’Aquila（阿奎拉大学）；CNR-SPIN（意大利国家研究委员会自旋物理学中心）
The thermoelectric response of 80-nm-thick strained HgTe films of a three-dimensional topological insulator (3D TI) has been studied experimentally. An ambipolar thermopower is observed where the Fermi energy moves from conducting to the valence bulk band. The comparison between theory and experiment shows that the thermopower is mostly due to the phonon drag contribution. In the region where the 2D Dirac electrons coexist with bulk hole states, the Seebeck coefficient is modified due to 2D electron - 3D hole scattering.
Surface states of topological insulators (TIs) have been playing the central role in the majority of outstanding investigations in low-dimensional electron systems for more than 10 years. TIs based on high-quality strained HgTe films demonstrate a variety of subtle physical effects. The strain leads to a bulk band gap but limits a maximum HgTe strained film thickness, and therefore, the majority of experiments were performed on films with a thickness of less than 100 nm. Since a spatial separation of topological states is crucial for the study of a single-surface response, it is essential to i…
We present the theory describing the various surface electronic states arisen from the mixing of conduction and valence bands in a strained mercury telluride (HgTe) bulk material. We demonstrate that the strain-induced band gap in the Brillouin zone center of HgTe results in the surface states of two different kinds. Surface states of the first kind exist in the small region of electron wave vectors near the center of the Brillouin zone and have the Dirac linear electron dispersion characteristic for topological states. The surface states of the second kind exist only far from the center of th…
Quantum spin Hall insulators (QSHIs) based on HgTe and three-layer InAs/GaSb quantum wells (QWs) have comparable bulk band-gaps of about 10--18~meV. The former however features a band-gap vanishing with temperature, while the gap in InAs/GaSb QSHIs is rather temperature-independent.Here, we report on the realization of large inverted band-gap in strained three-layer InAs/GaInSb QWs. By temperature-dependent magnetotransport measurements of gated Hall bar devices, we extract a gap as high as 45 meV. Combining local and non-local measurements, we attribute the edge conductivity observed at tempe…
Spin-orbit effects appearing in topological insulators (TI) and at Rashba interfaces are currently revolutionizing how we can manipulate spins and have led to several newly discovered effects, from spin-charge interconversion and spin-orbit torques to novel magnetoresistance phenomena. In particular, a puzzling magnetoresistance has been evidenced, bilinear in electric and magnetic fields. Here, we report the observation of bilinear magnetoresistance (BMR) in strained HgTe, a prototypical TI. We show that both the amplitude and sign of this BMR can be tuned by controlling, with an electric gat…
We review low and high field magnetotransport in 80 nm-thick strained HgTe, a material that belongs to the class of strong three-dimensional topological insulators. Utilizing a top gate, the Fermi level can be tuned from the valence band via the Dirac surface states into the conduction band and allows studying Landau quantization in situations where different species of charge carriers contribute to magnetotransport. Landau fan charts, mapping the conductivity $ σ_{xx}(V_g, B) $ in the whole magnetic field - gate voltage range, can be divided into six areas, depending on the state of the parti…
Quantum spin Hall-superconductor hybrids are promising sources of topological superconductivity and Majorana modes, particularly given recent progress on HgTe and InAs/GaSb. We propose a new method of revealing topological superconductivity in extended quantum spin Hall Josephson junctions supporting `fractional Josephson currents'. Specifically, we show that as one threads magnetic flux between the superconductors, the critical current traces an interference pattern featuring sharp fingerprints of topological superconductivity---even when noise spoils parity conservation.
Engineering quantum spin Hall insulators by strained-layer heterostructures
量子自旋霍尔绝缘体（quantum spin Hall insulators，QSHIs），又称二维拓扑绝缘体，是一种非传统的量子态，具有绝缘体和导电边缘，起源于非平凡的反向能带结构，并被提议作为探索自旋电子学应用和与自旋螺旋边缘模式相关的奇异准粒子的平台。尽管有各种材料的理论建议，但是，到目前为止，QSHIs的实验演示仅限于两个系统-HgTe/CdTe和InAs/GaSb-这两个系统都是晶格匹配的半导体异质结构。在这里，我们报告的传输测量在另一个实现的带反转异质结构作为QSHI候选-InAs/In $_{x}$ Ga $_{1-x}$ Sb与晶格失配。研究表明，In $_{x}$ Ga $_{1-x}$ Sb层中的压应变增强了能带重叠和能隙。因此，高体电阻率，两个数量级高于InAs/GaSb，得到深的带反转制度。应变还增强了体Rashba自旋轨道分裂，导致一种不寻常的情况下，费米能级只穿过一个自旋分支的电子和类孔带在一个很宽的密度范围。这些特性使该系统成为一个有前途的平台，强大的QSHIs具有独特的自旋特性，并证明应变是一个重要的成分，调整自旋-轨道相互作用。
Kondo physics in doped monolayer graphene is predicted to exhibit unusual features due to the linear vanishing of the pristine material's density of states at the Dirac point. Despite several attempts, conclusive experimental observation of the phenomenon remains elusive. One likely obstacle to identification is a very small Kondo temperature scale $T_K$ in situations where the chemical potential lies near the Dirac point. We propose tailored mechanical deformations of monolayer graphene as a means of revealing unique fingerprints of the Kondo effect. Inhomogeneous strains are known to produce…
Observation of the universal magnetoelectric effect in a 3D topological insulator
拓扑绝缘体（TI）的电动力学由修改的麦克斯韦方程描述，其包含将电场耦合到介质的磁化和将磁场耦合到介质的极化的附加项，使得耦合系数被量化为每个表面$e^2 / 2 h c $的奇数倍。在这里，我们报告观察到的这种所谓的拓扑磁电（TME）效应。我们使用单色太赫兹（THz）光谱的TI结构配备了半透明的门选择性地解决表面状态。在强外磁场中，当一定频率的线偏振太赫兹辐射通过应变碲化汞三维薄膜的两个表面时，我们观察到一个与精细结构常数$α= e^2 / \hbar c$相等的普遍法拉第旋转角.这些实验提供了对TI的轴子电动力学的深入了解，并可能用于三个基本物理常数的精确定义。
