The helical Dirac fermions at the surface of topological insulators show a strong circular dichroism which has been explained as being due to either the initial-state spin angular momentum, the initial-state orbital angular momentum, or the handednes
s of the experimental setup. All of these interpretations conflict with our data from Bi2Te3 which depend on the photon energy and show several sign changes. Our one-step photoemission calculations coupled to ab initio theory confirm the sign change and assign the dichroism to a final-state effect. The spin polarization of the photoelectrons, instead, remains a reliable probe for the spin in the initial state.
Topological insulators have been successfully identified by spin-resolved photoemission but the spin polarization remained low (~20%). We show for Bi2Te3 that the in-gap surface state is much closer to full spin polarization with measured values reac
hing 80% at the Fermi level. When hybridizing with the bulk it remains highly spin polarized which may explain recent unusual quantum interference results on Bi2Se3. The topological surface state shows a large circular dichroism in the photoelectron angle distribution with an asymmetry of ~20% the sign of which corresponds to that of the measured spin.
Topological insulators(1-8) are a novel form of matter which features metallic surface states with quasirelativistic dispersion similar to graphene(9). Unlike graphene, the locking of spin and momentum and the protection by time-reversal symmetry(1-8
) open up tremendous additional possibilities for external control of transport properties(10-18). Here we show by angle-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy that the topological sur-face states of Bi2Te3 and Bi2Se3 are stable against the deposition of Fe without opening a band gap. This stability extends to low submonolayer coverages meaning that the band gap reported recently(19) for Fe on Bi2Se3 is incorrect as well as to complete monolayers meaning that topological surface states can very well exist at interfaces with ferromagnets in future devices.
