No Arabic abstract
Dynamic manipulation of magnetism in topological materials is demonstrated here via a Floquet engineering approach using circularly polarized light. Increasing the strength of the laser field, besides the expected topological phase transition, the magnetically doped topological insulator thin film also undergoes a magnetic phase transition from ferromagnetism to paramagnetism, whose critical behavior strongly depends on the quantum quenching. In sharp contrast to the equilibrium case, the non-equilibrium Curie temperatures vary for different time scale and experimental setup, not all relying on change of topology. Our discoveries deepen the understanding of the relationship between topology and magnetism in the non-equilibrium regime and extend optoelectronic device applications to topological materials.
Electrical field control of the carrier density of topological insulators (TI) has greatly expanded the possible practical use of these materials. However, the combination of low temperature local probe studies and a gate tunable TI device remains challenging. We have overcome this limitation by scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy measurements on in-situ molecular beam epitaxy growth of Bi2Se3 films on SrTiO3 substrates with pre-patterned electrodes. Using this gating method, we are able to shift the Fermi level of the top surface states by 250 meV on a 3 nm thick Bi2Se3 device. We report field effect studies of the surface state dispersion, band gap, and electronic structure at the Fermi level.
We report magneto-transport studies of topological insulator Bi_{2}Te_{3} thin films grown by pulsed laser deposition. A non-saturating linear-like magneto-resistance (MR) is observed at low temperatures in the magnetic field range from a few Tesla up to 60 Tesla. We demonstrate that the strong linear-like MR at high field can be well understood as the weak antilocalization phenomena described by Hikami-Larkin-Nagaoka theory. Our analysis suggests that in our system, a topological insulator, the elastic scattering time can be longer than the spin-orbit scattering time. We briefly discuss our results in the context of Dirac Fermion physics and quantum linear magnetoresistance.
Thin films of topological insulators (TI) attract large attention because of expected topological effects from the inter-surface hybridization of Dirac points. However, these effects may be depleted by unexpectedly large energy smearing $Gamma$ of surface Dirac points by the random potential of abundant Coulomb impurities. We show that in a typical TI film with large dielectric constant $sim 50$ sandwiched between two low dielectric constant layers, the Rytova-Chaplik-Entin-Keldysh modification of the Coulomb potential of a charge impurity allows a larger number of the film impurities to contribute to $Gamma$. As a result, $Gamma$ is large and independent of the TI film thickness $d$ for $d > 5$ nm. In thinner films $Gamma$ grows with decreasing $d$ due to reduction of screening by the hybridization gap. We study the surface conductivity away from the neutrality point and at the neutrality point. In the latter case, we find the maximum TI film thickness at which the hybridization gap is still able to make a TI film insulating and allow observation of the quantum spin Hall effect, $d_{max} sim 7$ nm.
Three-dimensional topological insulators (TIs) have emerged as a unique state of quantum matter and generated enormous interests in condensed matter physics. The surfaces of a three dimensional (3D) TI are composed of a massless Dirac cone, which is characterized by the Z2 topological invariant. Introduction of magnetism on the surface of TI is essential to realize the quantum anomalous Hall effect (QAHE) and other novel magneto-electric phenomena. Here, by using a combination of first principles calculations, magneto-transport, angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES), and time resolved ARPES (tr-ARPES), we study the electronic properties of Gadolinium (Gd) doped Sb2Te3. Our study shows that Gd doped Sb2Te3 is a spin-orbit-induced bulk band-gap material, whose surface is characterized by a single topological surface state. We further demonstrate that introducing diluted 4f-electron magnetism into the Sb2Te3 topological insulator system by the Gd doping creates surface magnetism in this system. Our results provide a new platform to investigate the interaction between dilute magnetism and topology in doped topological materials.
The large curvature effects on micromagnetic energy of a thin ferromagnetic film with nonlocal dipolar energy are considered. We predict that the dipolar interaction and surface curvature can produce perpendicular anisotropy which can be controlled by engineering a special type of periodic surface shape structure. Similar effects can be achieved by a significant surface roughness in the film. We show that in general the anisotropy can point in an arbitrary direction depending on the surface curvature. We provide simple examples of these periodic surface structures to demonstrate how to engineer particular anisotropies in the film.