Coupled Spin-Orbital Texture in a Prototypical Topological Insulator

2012/11/26 by Yunshan Cao, Justin Waugh, Cao, Y. +21
Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) #Micro and Nano Robotics #Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1211.5998

openalex publication_date 2012/11/26 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

One of the most important properties of topological insulators (TIs) is the helical spin texture of the Dirac surface states, which has been theoretically and experimentally argued to be left-handed helical above the Dirac point and right handed helical below. However, since the spin is not a good quantum number in these strongly spin-orbit coupled systems, this can not be a complete statement, and we must consider the total angular momentum J = L + S that is a contribution of the spin and orbital terms. Using a combination of orbital and spin-resolved angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES), we show a direct link between the different orbital and spin components, with a "backwards" spin texture directly observed for the in-plane orbital states of Bi2Se3.

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