2011/03/31 by Yi Li, Congjun Wu · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #cond-mat.str-el
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.110.216802
published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 216802 (2013)
arxiv created 2013/05/21 · arxiv updated 2013/05/23
We study the 3D topological insulators in the continuum by coupling spin-1/2 fermions to the Aharonov-Casher SU(2) gauge field. They exhibit flat Landau levels in which orbital angular momentum and spin are coupled with a fixed helicity. The 3D lowest Landau level wavefunctions exhibit the quaternionic analyticity as a generalization of the complex analyticity of the 2D case. Each Landau level contributes one branch of gapless helical Dirac modes to the surface spectra, whose topological properties belong to the Z2-class. The flat Landau levels can be generalized to an arbitrary dimension. Interaction effects and experimental realizations are also studied.