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Holographic treatment of boundary disorder in a topological insulator

Kim, Kun Woo and Mong, Roger S. K. and Franz, Marcel and Refael, Gil (2015) Holographic treatment of boundary disorder in a topological insulator. Physical Review B, 92 (7). Art. No. 075110. ISSN 1098-0121. doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.92.075110. https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20150828-142414208

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Abstract

The effect of boundary disorder on electronic systems is particularly interesting for topological phases with surface and edge states. Using exact diagonalization, it has been demonstrated that the surface states of a three-dimensional (3D) topological insulator survive strong surface disorder, and simply get pushed to a clean part of the bulk. Here we explore a method which analytically eliminates the clean bulk and reduces a D-dimensional problem to a Hamiltonian-diagonalization problem within the (D−1)-dimensional disordered boundary. This dramatic reduction in complexity allows the analysis of significantly bigger systems than is possible with exact diagonalization. We use our method to analyze a 2D topological spin-Hall insulator with nonmagnetic and magnetic edge impurities, and we calculate the disorder-induced redistribution of probability density (or local density of states) in the insulating bulk, as well as the transport effects of edge impurities. The analysis reveals how the edge recovers from disorder scattering as the disorder strength increases.


Item Type:Article
Related URLs:
URLURL TypeDescription
http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.92.075110 DOIArticle
http://journals.aps.org/prb/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevB.92.075110PublisherArticle
http://arxiv.org/abs/1503.03456arXivDiscussion Paper
Alternate Title:'Holographic' treatment of surface disorder on a topological insulator
Additional Information:© 2015 American Physical Society. Received 3 May 2015; published 6 August 2015. It is a pleasure to acknowledge support from the Sherman- Fairchild Foundation (R.M.), the Packard Foundation, the Walter Burke Institue of Theoretical Physics, as well as the Institute of Quantum Information and Matter, an NSF Frontier Center, with the support of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (K.W.K., G.R.). In addition, support from NSERC and CIFAR is gratefully acknowledged (M.F.).
Group:Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics, Institute for Quantum Information and Matter
Funders:
Funding AgencyGrant Number
Sherman Fairchild FoundationUNSPECIFIED
David and Lucile Packard FoundationUNSPECIFIED
Walter Burke Institue of Theoretical PhysicsUNSPECIFIED
Institute of Quantum Information and Matter (IQIM)UNSPECIFIED
NSF Physics Frontiers CenterUNSPECIFIED
Gordon and Betty Moore FoundationUNSPECIFIED
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)UNSPECIFIED
Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIAR)UNSPECIFIED
Issue or Number:7
Classification Code:PACS number(s): 72.10.Fk, 73.20.At, 73.20.Fz, 72.15.Rn
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevB.92.075110
Record Number:CaltechAUTHORS:20150828-142414208
Persistent URL:https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20150828-142414208
Usage Policy:No commercial reproduction, distribution, display or performance rights in this work are provided.
ID Code:59965
Collection:CaltechAUTHORS
Deposited By: Tony Diaz
Deposited On:29 Aug 2015 16:22
Last Modified:10 Nov 2021 22:27

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