Phonon-induced topological transitions and crossovers in Dirac materials

2012/09/30 by Ion Garate · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #cond-mat.str-el #cond-mat.mes-hall #cond-mat.mtrl-sci

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.110.046402

published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 046402 (2013) · 5 pages; published version

arxiv created 2013/01/24 · arxiv updated 2013/01/28

Abstract

We show that electron-phonon interactions can alter the topological properties of Dirac insulators and semimetals, both at zero and nonzero temperature. Contrary to the common belief that increasing temperature always destabilizes topological phases, our results highlight instances in which phonons may lead to the appearance of topological surface states above a crossover temperature in a material that has a topologically trivial ground state.

Cited by

• Emergent topological phases and coexistence of gapless and spectral-localized Floquet quantum spin Hall states via electron-phonon interaction
• Dynamics of surface electrons in a topological insulator: cyclotron resonance at room temperature