Electron-hole scattering limited transport of Dirac fermions in a topological insulator
Valentin L. Müller, Yuan Yan, Oleksiy Kashuba, Björn Trauzettel, Mohamed Abdelghany, Johannes Kleinlein, Wouter Beugeling, Hartmut Buhmann, Laurens W. Molenkamp
We experimentally investigate the effect of electron temperature on transport in the two-dimensional Dirac surface states of the three-dimensional topological insulator HgTe. We find that around the minimal conductivity point, where both electrons and holes are present, heating the carriers with a DC current results in a non-monotonic differential resistance of narrow channels. We show that the observed initial increase in resistance can be attributed to electron-hole scattering, while the decrease follows naturally from the change in Fermi energy of the charge carriers. Both effects are governed dominantly by a van Hove singularity in the bulk valence band. The results demonstrate the importance of interband electron-hole scattering in the transport properties of topological insulators.
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 propose magnonic analogs of topological crystalline insulators which possess Dirac surface states protected by the combined symmetry of time-reversal and half translation. Constructing models of the topological magnon systems, we demonstrate that the energy current flows through the systems in response to an electric field, owing to the Dirac surface states with the spin-momentum locking. We also propose a realization of the magnonic analogs of topological crystalline insulators in a magnetic compound CrI$_{3}$ with a monoclinic structure.
We show that a class of weak three-dimensional topological insulators feature one-dimensional Dirac electrons on their surfaces. Their hallmark is a line-like energy dispersion along certain directions of the surface Brillouin zone. These one-dimensional Dirac line degeneracies are topologically protected by a symmetry that we refer to as in-plane time-reversal invariance. We show how this invariance leads to Dirac lines in the surface spectrum of stacked Kane-Mele systems and more general models for weak three-dimensional topological insulators.
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.
The low energy physics of both graphene and surface states of three-dimensional topological insulators is described by gapless Dirac fermions with linear dispersion. In this work, we predict the emergence of a "heavy" Dirac fermion in a graphene/topological insulator hetero-junction, where the linear term almost vanishes and the corresponding energy dispersion becomes highly non-linear. By combining {\it ab initio} calculations and an effective low-energy model, we show explicitly how strong hybridization between Dirac fermions in graphene and the surface states of topological insulators can r…
We present a general description of topological insulators from the point of view of Dirac equations. The Z_{2} index for the Dirac equation is always zero, and thus the Dirac equation is topologically trivial. After the quadratic B term in momentum is introduced to correct the mass term m or the band gap of the Dirac equation, the Z_{2} index is modified as 1 for mB>0 and 0 for mB<0. For a fixed B there exists a topological quantum phase transition from a topologically trivial system to a non-trivial one system when the sign of mass m changes. A series of solutions near the boundary in the mo…
Existence of a protected surface state described by a massless Dirac equation is a defining property of the topological insulator. Though this statement can be explicitly verified on an idealized flat surface, it remains to be addressed to what extent it could be general. On a curved surface, the surface Dirac equation is modified by the spin connection terms. Here, in the light of the differential geometry, we give a general framework for constructing the surface Dirac equation starting from the Hamiltonian for bulk topological insulators. The obtained unified description clarifies the physic…
We have considered a system of two topological insulators and have determined the properties of the surface states at the junction. Here we report that these states, under certain conditions exhibit superluminous (tachyonic) dispersion of the Dirac fermions. Although superluminal excitations are known to exist in optical systems, this is the first demonstration of possible tachyonic excitations in a purely electronic system. The first ever signature of tachyons could therefore be found experimentally in a topological insulator junction.
The possible realization of dissipationless chiral edge current in a topological insulator / magnetic insulator heterostructure is based on the condition that the magnetic proximity exchange coupling at the interface is dominated by the Dirac surface states of the topological insulator. Here we report a polarized neutron reflectometry observation of Dirac electrons mediated magnetic proximity effect in a bulk-insulating topological insulator (Bi$_{0.2}$Sb$_{0.8}$)$_{2}$Te$_{3}$ / magnetic insulator EuS heterostructure. We are able to maximize the proximity induced magnetism by applying an elec…
We study the stability against disorder of surface states of weak $\mathbb{Z}_2$ topological insulators (superconductors) which are stacks of strong $\mathbb{Z}_2$ topological insulators (superconductors), considering representative Dirac Hamiltonians in the Altland-Zirnbauer symmetry classes in various spatial dimensions. We show that, in the absence of disorder, surface Dirac fermions of weak $\mathbb{Z}_2$ topological insulators (superconductors) can be gapped out by a Dirac mass term which couples surface Dirac cones and leads to breaking of a translation symmetry (dimerization). The dimer…
We numerically demonstrate that the topological corner states residing in the corners of higher-order topological insulator possess non-Abelian braiding properties. Such topological corner states are Dirac fermionic modes other than Majorana zero-modes. We claim that Dirac fermionic modes protected by nontrivial topology also support non-Abelian braiding. An analytical description on such non-Abelian braiding is conducted based on the vortex-induced Dirac-type fermionic modes. The braiding operator for Dirac fermionic modes is also analytically derivated and compared with the Majorana zero-mod…
We report anisotropic Dirac-cone surface bands on a side-surface geometry of the topological insulator Bi$_2$Se$_3$ revealed by first-principles density-functional calculations. We find that the electron velocity in the side-surface Dirac cone is anisotropically reduced from that in the (111)-surface Dirac cone, and the velocity is not in parallel with the wave vector {\bf k} except for {\bf k} in high-symmetry directions. The size of the electron spin depends on the direction of {\bf k} due to anisotropic variation of the noncollinearity of the electron state. Low-energy effective Hamiltonian…
Bilayer Heisenberg ferromagnetic insulators hold degenerate terahertz Dirac magnon modes associated with two opposite valleys of the hexagonal Brillouin zone. We show that this energy degeneracy can be removed by breaking of the inversion symmetry (I), leading to a topological magnon valley current. We show furthermore that this current leads to valley Seebeck effect for magnons and is thereby detectable. We perform calculations in the specific example of bilayer CrBr3, where I can be broken by electrostatic doping.
The properties of surface Dirac Fermions on a 3D topological insulator in proximity to a magnetic insulator with spatially textured magnetization are considered. We present an exact analytical treatment of the spectrum, the bound states and the domain wall resistance for an extended generic domain wall with in-plane and out-of-plane magnetizations. In the latter case, we find oscillations in the domain wall resistance as a function of the wall width and for certain widths a complete absence of reflections for all incoming momenta. The surprising occurrence of oscillations and the reflectionles…
We have designed three-dimensional models of topological insulator thin films, showing a tunability of the odd number of Dirac cones on opposite surfaces driven by the atomic-scale geometry at the boundaries. This enables creation of a single Dirac cone at the $Γ$-point as well as possible suppression of quantum tunneling between Dirac states at opposite surfaces (and gap formation), when opposite surfaces are geometrically differentiated. The spin texture of surface states was found to change from a spin-momentum-locking symmetry to a progressive loss in surface spin polarization upon the int…
The recent developments in the emerging field of plasmonics in graphene and other Dirac systems are reviewed and a comprehensive introduction to the standard models and techniques is given. In particular, we discuss intrinsic plasmon excitations of single and bilayer graphene via hydrodynamic equations and the random phase approximation, but also comment on double and multilayer structures. Additionally, we address Dirac systems in the retardation limit and also with large spin-orbit coupling including topological insulators. Finally, we summarize basic properties of the charge, current and ph…
We discuss the excitation spectra around the Dirac node on a surface of a three-dimensional topological insulator. By using the diagrammatic expansion, we show that the coupling of an electron with the gauge field in the presence of impurity scatterings opens a gap around the Dirac node. The results are consistent with a recent experimental finding by T. Sato,et. al.[ Nature Phys. \textbf{7}, 840 (2011)]. We also discuss the consistency between the present results and the bulk-boundary correspondence of the topological insulator in the presence of time reversal symmetry. The conclusion can be …
The Dirac cone on a surface of a topological insulator shows linear dispersion analogous to optics and its velocity depends on materials. We consider a junction of two topological insulators with different velocities, and calculate the reflectance and transmittance. We find that they reflect the backscattering-free nature of the helical surface states. When the two velocities have opposite signs, both transmission and reflection are prohibited for normal incidence, when a mirror symmetry normal to the junction is preserved. In this case we show that there necessarily exist gapless states at th…
We study the properties of a family of anti-pervoskite materials, which are topological crystalline insulators with an insulating bulk but a conducting surface. Using ab-initio DFT calculations, we investigate the bulk and surface topology and show that these materials exhibit type-I as well as type-II Dirac surface states protected by reflection symmetry. While type-I Dirac states give rise to closed circular Fermi surfaces, type-II Dirac surface states are characterized by open electron and hole pockets that touch each other. We find that the type-II Dirac states exhibit characteristic van-H…
Three dimensional (3D) topological insulators (TIs) are an important class of materials with applications in electronics, spintronics and quantum computing. With the recent development of truly bulk insulating 3D TIs, it has become possible to realize surface dominated phenomena in electrical transport measurements e.g. the quantum Hall (QH) effect of massless Dirac fermions in topological surface states (TSS). However, to realize more advanced devices and phenomena, there is a need for a platform to tune the TSS or modify them e.g. gap them by proximity with magnetic insulators, in a clean ma…
The surface state of a three-dimensional topological insulator forms a two-dimensional massless Dirac electron system. In Dirac electron systems, Coulomb interaction is not screened due to the small density of states at the Fermi energy and thus the long-range Coulomb interaction (LRCI) plays a crucial role. In this paper, we investigate the surface state with chemical potential $μ=0$ in the presence of the LRCI using the Wilsonian renormalization group. We first check the Fermi velocity enhancement in the surface Dirac system, which also occurs in a usual Dirac electron system. The most remar…
We address the nature of spin-orbit torques at the magnetic surfaces of topological insulators, using both Kubo formula and Keldysh formalism. Through the analysis of the derived spin-charge equations, we find that the so-called Dirac torques possess a different symmetry compared to their Rashba counterpart, as well as a high anisotropy as a function of the magnetization direction. In particular, the damping torque vanishes when the magnetization lies in the plane of the topological insulator surface. This peculiarity has important consequences in terms of magnetization dynamics and switching,…
We have investigated the nature of surface states in the Bi2Te3 family of three-dimensional topological insulators using first-principles calculations as well as model Hamiltonians. When the surface Dirac cone is warped due to Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling in rhombohedral structures, the spin acquires a finite out-of-plane component. We predict a novel in-plane spin-texture of the warped surface Dirac cone with spins not perpendicular to the electron momentum. Our k.p model calculation reveals that this novel in-plane spin-texture requires high order Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling terms.
Topological insulators are a novel class of quantum matter with a gapped insulating bulk yet gapless spin helical Dirac fermion conducting surface states. Here, we report local and non-local electrical and magneto transport measurements in dual-gated BiSbTeSe2 thin film topological insulator devices, with conduction dominated by the spatially separated top and bottom surfaces, each hosting a single species of Dirac fermions with independent gate control over the carrier type and density. We observe many intriguing quantum transport phenomena in such a fully-tunable two-species topological Dira…
We use the Dirac cone model to explore the high Chern number (C) phases that are realized in the magnetic-doped topological insulator (TI) multilayer structures by Zhao et al. [Nature 588, 419 (2020)]. The Chern number is calculated by capturing the evolution of the phase boundaries with the parameters and then the Chern number phase diagrams of the TI multilayer structures are obtained. The high-C behavior is attributed to the band inversion of the renormalized Dirac cones, along with which the spin polarization at the Γpoint will get increased. Moreover, another two TI multilayer structures …
Electrons with a linear energy/momentum dispersion are called massless Dirac electrons and represent the low-energy excitations in exotic materials like Graphene and Topological Insulators (TIs). Dirac electrons are characterized by notable properties like a high mobility, a tunable density and, in TIs, a protection against backscattering through the spin-momentum looking mechanism. All those properties make Graphene and TIs appealling for plasmonics applications. However, Dirac electrons are expected to present also a strong nonlinear optical behavior. This should mirror in phenomena like ele…
We study quantum transport and scattering of massless Dirac fermions by spatially localized static magnetic fields. The employed model describes in a unified manner the effects of orbital magnetic fields, Zeeman and exchange fields in topological insulators, and the pseudo-magnetic fields caused by strain or defects in monolayer graphene. The general scattering theory is formulated, and for radially symmetric fields, the scattering amplitude and the total and transport cross sections are expressed in terms of phase shifts. As applications, we study ring-shaped magnetic fields (including the Ah…
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…
Graphene and topological insulators (TI) possess two-dimensional Dirac fermions with distinct physical properties. Integrating these two Dirac materials in a single device creates interesting opportunities for exploring new physics of interacting massless Dirac fermions. Here we report on a practical route to experimental fabrication of graphene-Sb2Te3 heterostructure. The graphene-TI heterostructures are prepared by using a dry transfer of chemical-vapor-deposition grown graphene film. ARPES measurements confirm the coexistence of topological surface states of Sb2Te3 and Dirac π bands of grap…
We report on a >100-fold enhancement of Raman responses from Bi2Se3 thin films if laser photon energy switches from 2.33 eV (532 nm) to 1.58 eV (785 nm), which is due to direct optical coupling to Dirac surface states (SS) at the resonance energy of ~1.5 eV (a thickness-independent enhancement) and due to nonlinearly excited Dirac plasmon (a thickness-dependent enhancement). Owing to the direct optical coupling, we observed an in-plane phonon mode of hexagonally arranged Se-atoms associated with a continuous network of Dirac SS. This mode revealed a Fano lineshape for films <15 nm thick, resul…
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…
In this tutorial, we pedagogically review recent developments in the field of non-interacting fermionic phases of matter, focussing on the low energy description of higher-order topological insulators in terms of the Dirac equation. Our aim is to give a mostly self-contained treatment. After introducing the Dirac approximation of topological crystalline band structures, we use it to derive the anomalous end and corner states of first- and higher-order topological insulators in one and two spatial dimensions. In particular, we recast the classical derivation of domain wall bound states of the S…
In a typical situation, gapless surface states of a three-dimensional (3D) weak topological insulator (WTI) appear only on sides, leaving the top and bottom surfaces gapped. To describe massless Dirac electrons emergent on such side surfaces of a WTI, a two-dimensional (2D) model consisting of a series of one-dimensional helical channels is usually employed. Yet, explicit derivation of such a model from a 3D bulk Hamiltonian has been lacking. Here, we explicitly derive an effective 2D model for the WTI surface states starting from a Wilson-Dirac Hamiltonian for the bulk WTI and establish a fir…
Optical control of Dirac surface states (SS) in topological insulators (TI) remains one of the most challenging problems governing their potential applications in novel electronic and spintronic devices. Here, using visible-range transient absorption spectroscopy exploiting ~340 nm (~3.65 eV) pumping, we provide evidence for dynamic opening of a gap in Dirac SS of the thin-film 3D TI Bi2Se3, which has been induced by the dynamic Rashba effect occurring in the film bulk with increasing optical pumping power (photoexcited carrier density). The observed effect appears through the transient absorp…
The concept of topological insulator (TI) has introduced a new point of view to condensed-matter physics, relating a priori unrelated subfields such as quantum (spin, anomalous) Hall effects, spin-orbit coupled materials, some classes of nodal superconductors and superfluid $^3$He, etc. From a technological point of view, topological insulator is expected to serve as a platform for realizing dissipationless transport in a non-superconducting context. The topological insulator exhibits a gapless surface state with a characteristic conic dispersion (a surface Dirac cone). Here, we review peculia…
We propose to Floquet-engineer Dirac cones at the surface of a three-dimensional topological insulator. We show that a large tunability of the Fermi velocity can be achieved as a function of the polarization, direction and amplitude of the driving field. Using this external control, the Dirac cones in the quasienergy spectrum may become elliptic or massive, in accordance to experimental evidences. These results help us to understand the interplay of surface states and external ac driving fields in topological insulators. In our work we use the full Hamiltonian for the three-dimensional system …
Light can be strongly confined in sub-wavelength spatial regions through the interaction with plasmons, the collective electronic modes appearing in metals and semiconductors. This confinement, which is particularly important in the terahertz spectral region, amplifies light-matter interaction and provides a powerful mechanism for efficiently generating non-linear optical phenomena. These effects are particularly relevant in Dirac materials like graphene and Topological Insulators, where massless fermions show a naturally non-linear optical behavior in the terahertz range. The strong interacti…
A three-dimensional weak topological insulator (WTI), being equivalent to stacked layers of two-dimensional quantum spin-Hall insulators, accommodates massless Dirac electrons on its side surface. A notable feature of WTIs is that surface states typically consist of two Dirac cones in the reciprocal space. We study the Landau quantization of Dirac electrons of WTIs in a perpendicular magnetic field. It is shown that when the magnetic length $l_B$ is much larger than the interlayer distance $a$, surface electrons are quantized into Landau levels according to the ordinary quantization rule for D…
We propose a different route to time-reversal invariant Weyl semimetals employing multilayer heterostructures comprising ordinary "trivial" insulators and nontrivial insulators with \textit{pairs} of protected Dirac cones on the surface. We consider both the case of weak topological insualtors, where surface Dirac cones are pinned to time-reversal invariant momenta, and of topological crystalline insulators with unpinned surface Dirac cones. For both realizations we explain phenomenologically how the proposed construction leads to the emergence of a Weyl semimetal phase. We further formulate e…
Low-energy collective electronic excitations exhibiting sound-like linear dispersion have been intensively studied both experimentally and theoretically for a long time. However, coherent acoustic plasmon modes appearing in time-domain measurements are rarely observed due to Landau damping by the single-particle continua. Here we report on the observation of coherent acoustic Dirac plasmon (CADP) modes excited in indirectly (electrostatically) opposite-surface coupled films of the topological insulator Bi2Se3. Using transient second harmonic generation, a technique capable of independently mon…
We provide a detailed microscopic characterization of the influence of defects-induced disorder onto the Dirac spectrum of three dimensional topological insulators. By spatially resolved Landau-levels spectroscopy measurements, we reveal the existence of nanoscale fluctuations of both the Dirac point energy as well as of the Dirac-fermions velocity which is found to spatially change in opposite direction for electrons and holes, respectively. These results evidence a scenario which goes beyond the existing picture based on chemical potential fluctuations. The findings are consistently explaine…
The intersection of two ferromagnetic domain walls placed on the surface of topological insulators provides a one-way beam splitter for domain-wall Dirac fermions. Based on an analytic expression for a static two-soliton magnetic texture we perform a systematic numerical study of the propagation of Dirac wave packets along such intersections. A single-cone staggered-grid finite difference lattice scheme is employed in the numerical analysis. It is shown that the angle of intersection plays a decisive role in determining the splitting ratio of the fermion beam. For a non-rectangular intersectio…
Dirac fermions in condensed matter physics hold great promise for novel fundamental physics, quantum devices and data storage applications. IV-VI semiconductors, in the inverted regime, have been recently shown to exhibit massless topological surface Dirac fermions protected by crystalline symmetry, as well as massive bulk Dirac fermions. Under a strong magnetic field (B), both surface and bulk states are quantized into Landau levels that disperse as B^1/2, and are thus difficult to distinguish. In this work, magneto-optical absorption is used to probe the Landau levels of high mobility Bi-dop…
Topological insulators can be seen as band-insulators with a conducting surface. The surface carriers are Dirac particles with an energy which increases linearly with momentum. This confers extraordinary transport properties characteristic of Dirac matter, a class of materials which electronic properties are "graphene-like". We show how HgTe, a material known to exhibit 2D spin-Hall effect in thin quantum wells,\cite{Konig2007} can be turned into a textbook example of Dirac matter by opening a strain-gap by exploiting the lattice mismatch on CdTe-based substrates. The evidence for Dirac matter…
Three-dimensional topological insulators (TIs) are characterized by spin-polarized Dirac-cone surface states that are protected from backscattering by time-reversal symmetry. Control of the spin polarization of topological surface states (TSSs) using femtosecond light pulses opens novel perspectives for the generation and manipulation of dissipationless surface spin currents on ultrafast timescales. Using time-, spin-, and angle-resolved spectroscopy, we directly monitor for the first time the ultrafast response of the spin polarization of photoexcited TSSs to circularly-polarized femtosecond …
Two-dimensional (2D) massless Dirac electrons appear on a surface of three-dimensional topological insulators. The conductivity of such a 2D Dirac electron system is studied for strong topological insulators in the case of the Fermi level being located at the Dirac point. The average conductivity $\langleσ\rangle$ is numerically calculated for a system of length $L$ and width $W$ under the periodic or antiperiodic boundary condition in the transverse direction, and its behavior is analyzed by applying a finite-size scaling approach. It is shown that $\langleσ\rangle$ is minimized at the clean …
The surface states of a topological insulator are described by an emergent relativistic massless Dirac equation in 2+1 dimensions. In contrast to graphene, there is an odd number of Dirac points, and the electron spin is directly coupled to the momentum. We show that a magnetic impurity opens up a local gap and suppresses the local density of states. Furthermore, the Dirac electronic states mediate an RKKY interaction among the magnetic impurities which is always ferromagnetic, whenever the chemical potential lies near the Dirac point. These effects can be directly measured in STM experiments.…
The spectrum of massless Dirac electrons on the side surface of a three-dimensional weak topological insulator is significantly affected by whether the number of unit atomic layers constituting the sample is even or odd; it has a finite-size energy gap in the even case while it is gapless in the odd case. The conductivity of such a two-dimensional Dirac electron system with quenched disorder is calculated when the Fermi level is located at the Dirac point. It is shown that the conductivity increases with increasing disorder and shows no clear even-odd difference when the aspect ratio of the sy…
We report on the observation of photogalvanic effects in epitaxially grown Sb_2Te_3 three-dimensional (3D) topological insulators (TI). We show that asymmetric scattering of Dirac electrons driven back and forth by the terahertz electric field results in a dc electric current. Due to the "symmetry filtration" the dc current is generated in the surface electrons only and provides an opto-electronic access to probe the electric transport in TI, surface domains orientation and details of electron scattering even in 3D TI at room temperature where conventional surface electron transport is usually…
We theoretically predict two new classes of three-dimensional topological crystalline insulators (TCIs), which have an odd number of unpinned surface Dirac cones protected by crystal symmetries. The first class is protected by a single glide plane symmetry; the second class is protected by a composition of a twofold rotation and time-reversal symmetry. Both classes of TCIs are characterized by a quantized $π$ Berry phase associated with surface states and a $Z_2$ topological invariant associated with the bulk bands. In the presence of disorder, these TCI surface states are protected against lo…
BiSbTeSe$_2$ is a 3D topological insulator (3D-TI) with Dirac type surface states and low bulk carrier density, as donors and acceptors compensate each other. Dominating low temperature surface transport in this material is heralded by Shubnikov-de Haas oscillations and the quantum Hall effect. Here, we experimentally probe and model the electronic density of states (DOS) in thin layers of BiSbTeSe$_2$ by capacitance experiments both without and in quantizing magnetic fields. By probing the lowest Landau levels, we show that a large fraction of the electrons filled via field effect into the sy…
By solving two-component spinor equation for massless Dirac Fermions, we show that graphene under a periodic external magnetic field exhibits a unique energy spectrum: At low energies, Dirac Fermions are localized inside the magnetic region with discrete Landau energy levels, while at higher energies, Dirac Fermions are mainly found in non-magnetic regions with continuous energy bands originating from wavefunctions analogous to particle-in-box states of electrons. These findings offer a new methodology for the control and tuning of massless Dirac Fermions in graphene.
The generation of photocurrent in condensed matter is of main interest for photovoltaic and optoelectronic applications. Shift current, a nonlinear photoresponse, has attracted recent intensive attention as a dominant player of bulk photovoltaic effect in ferroelectric materials. In three dimensional topological insulators $\text{Bi}_2\text{X}_3$ (X: Te, Se), we find that Dirac surface states with a hexagonal warping term carry shift current by linearly polarized light. In addition, shift spin-current is introduced with the time-reversal symmetry breaking perturbation. The estimate for the mag…
We study topological aspects of a Dirac fermion coupled with a Higgs field associated with the lattice model introduced by Benalcazar et al. which shows the topological quadrupole phase. Using the index theorem, we show that the index of the Hamiltonian is just given by the winding number of the Higgs field, implying that a corner state of the lattice model belongs to the same class of the Jackiw-Rossi states localized at a vortex. We also calculate the current density of the Dirac fermion with a symmetry breaking term dependent on time, which is associated with the dipole pump proposed by Ben…
