No Arabic abstract
We reveal a proximity effect between a topological band (Chern) insulator described by a Haldane model and spin-polarized Dirac particles of a graphene layer. Coupling weakly the two systems through a tunneling term in the bulk, the topological Chern insulator induces a gap and an opposite Chern number on the Dirac particles at half-filling resulting in a sign flip of the Berry curvature at one Dirac point. We study different aspects of the bulk-edge correspondence and present protocols to observe the evolution of the Berry curvature as well as two counter-propagating (protected) edge modes with different velocities. In the strong-coupling limit, the energy spectrum shows flat bands. Therefore we build a perturbation theory and address further the bulk-edge correspondence. We also show the occurrence of a topological insulating phase with Chern number one when only the lowest band is filled. We generalize the effect to Haldane bilayer systems with asymmetric Semenoff masses. We propose an alternative definition of the topological invariant on the Bloch sphere.
Topological insulators (TI) are bulk insulators that possess robust chiral conducting states along their interfaces with normal insulators. A tremendous research effort has recently been devoted to TI-based heterostructures, in which conventional proximity effects give rise to many exotic physical phenomena. Here we establish the potential existence of topological proximity effects at the interface of a topological graphene nanoribbon (GNR) and a normal GNR. Specifically, we show that the location of the topological edge states exhibits versatile tunability as a function of the interface orientation, as well as the strengths of the interface coupling and spin-orbit coupling in the normal GNR. For zigzag and bearded GNRs, the topological edge state can be tuned to be either at the interface or outer edge of the normal ribbon. For armchair GNR, the potential location of the topological edge state can be further enriched to be at the edge of or within the normal ribbon, at the interface, or diving into the topological GNR. We also discuss potential experimental realization of the predicted topological proximity effects, which may pave the way for integrating the salient functionality of TI and graphene in future device applications.
Enhancing the spin-orbit interaction in graphene, via proximity effects with topological insulators, could create a novel 2D system that combines nontrivial spin textures with high electron mobility. In order to engineer practical spintronics applications with such graphene/topological insulator (Gr/TI) heterostructures, an understanding of the hybrid spin-dependent properties is essential. {However to date, despite the large number of experimental studies on Gr/TI heterostructures reporting a great variety of remarkable (spin) transport phenomena, little is known about the true nature of the spin texture of the interface states as well as their role on the measured properties. Here we use {it ab initio} simulations and tight-binding models to determine the precise spin texture of electronic states in graphene interfaced with a Bi$_2$Se$_3$ topological insulator. Our calculations predict the emergence of a giant spin lifetime anisotropy in the graphene layer, which should be a measurable hallmark of spin transport in Gr/TI heterostructures, and suggest novel types of spin devices
The effects of the long range electrostatic interaction in twisted bilayer graphene are described using the Hartree-Fock approximation. The results show a significant dependence of the band widths and shapes on electron filling, and the existence of broken symmetry phases at many densities, either valley/spin polarized, with broken sublattice symmetry, or both.
Realizations of some topological phases in two-dimensional systems rely on the challenge of jointly incorporating spin-orbit and magnetic exchange interactions. Here, we predict the formation and control of a fully valley-polarized quantum anomalous Hall effect in bilayer graphene, by separately imprinting spin-orbit and magnetic proximity effects in different layers. This results in varying spin splittings for the conduction and valence bands, which gives rise to a topological gap at a single Dirac cone. The topological phase can be controlled by a gate voltage and switched between valleys by reversing the sign of the exchange interaction. By performing quantum transport calculations in disordered systems, the chirality and resilience of the valley-polarized edge state are demonstrated. Our findings provide a promising route to engineer a topological phase that could enable low-power electronic devices and valleytronic applications.
We consider ground state of electron-hole graphene bilayer composed of two independently doped graphene layers when a condensate of spatially separated electron-hole pairs is formed. In the weak coupling regime the pairing affects only conduction band of electron-doped layer and valence band of hole-doped layer, thus the ground state is similar to ordinary BCS condensate. At strong coupling, an ultrarelativistic character of electron dynamics reveals and the bands which are remote from Fermi surfaces (valence band of electron-doped layer and conduction band of hole-doped layer) are also affected by the pairing. The analysis of instability of unpaired state shows that s-wave pairing with band-diagonal condensate structure, described by two gaps, is preferable. A relative phase of the gaps is fixed, however at weak coupling this fixation diminishes allowing gapped and soliton-like excitations. The coupled self-consistent gap equations for these two gaps are solved at zero temperature in the constant-gap approximation and in the approximation of separable potential. It is shown that, if characteristic width of the pairing region is of the order of magnitude of chemical potential, then the value of the gap in the spectrum is not much different from the BCS estimation. However, if the pairing region is wider, then the gap value can be much larger and depends exponentially on its energy width.