Bulk physics entwined with a topological surface state

2017/02/28 by N. Klier, Klier, N., Shilpam Sharma +5
Physics and Astronomy · #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #FOS: Physical sciences #Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) #Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) #Quantum and electron transport phenomena #Topological Materials and Phenomena

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1702.08784

openalex publication_date 2017/02/28 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

For the IV-VI semiconductor family we derive an exact relation between the microscopic gap edge wave functions of the bulk insulator and the Dirac-Weyl topological surface state wave function, thus obtaining a fully microscopic surface state. We find that the balance of spin-orbit interaction and crystal field in the bulk, and the band bending at the surface, can profoundly influence the surface state spin-momentum locking. As a manifestation of this we predict that the spin texture of the M-point Dirac cones of SnTe can be tuned through an unexpectedly rich sequence of spin textures -- warped helical with winding number ± 1, k_x linear, hyperbolic, and k_y linear -- e.g. by tuning the band bending at the surface.

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