December 23, 2019
We study the dynamics of a non-magnetic impurity interacting with the surface states of a 3D and 2D topological insulator. Employing the linked cluster technique we develop a formalism for obtaining the Greens function of the mobile impurity interacting with the low-energy Dirac fermions. We show that for the non-recoil case in 2D, similar to the case involving the parabolic spectrum, the Greens function in the long-time limit has a power-law decay in time implying the breakdown of the quasiparticle description of the impurity. The spectral function, in turn, exhibits a weak power-law singularity. In the recoil case, however, the reduced phase-space for scattering processes implies a non-zero quasiparticle weight and the presence of a coherent part in the spectral function. Performing a weak coupling analysis we find that the mobility of the impurity reveals a divergence at low temperatures. In addition, we show that the Greens function of an impurity interacting with the helical edge modes (surface states of 2D TI), exhibit power-law decay in the long-time limit for both the non-recoil and recoil case (with low impurity momentum), indicating the break down of the quasiparticle picture. However, for impurity with high momentum, the quasiparticle picture is restored. Using the Boltzmann approach we show that the presence of the magnetic field results in a power-law divergence of the impurity mobility at low-temperatures.
Similar papers 1
May 19, 2015
The zero gap surface states of a 3D-topological insulator host highly mobile Dirac fermions with spin locked to the momentum. The high mobility attributed to absence of back scattering is reduced in presence of impurities on the surface. In particular, we discuss and compare scattering times for localized impurities on the surface, scattering between states of opposite helicity located on different surfaces coupled through a hybridization potential, and the role of magnetic i...
August 16, 2008
The surface states of a topological insulator are described by an emergent relativistic massless Dirac equation in 2+1 dimensions. In contrast to graphene, there is an odd number of Dirac points, and the electron spin is directly coupled to the momentum. We show that a magnetic impurity opens up a local gap and suppresses the local density of states. Furthermore, the Dirac electronic states mediate an RKKY interaction among the magnetic impurities which is always ferromagneti...
August 2, 2013
The goal of this paper is to provide an intuitive and useful tool for analyzing the impurity bound state problem. We develop a semiclassical approach and apply it to an impurity in two dimensional systems with parabolic or Dirac like bands. Our method consists of reducing a higher dimensional problem into a sum of one dimensional ones using the two dimensional Green functions as a guide. We then analyze the one dimensional effective systems in the spirit of the wave function ...
April 25, 2019
We consider periodically driven potential impurities coupled to the surface states of a two-dimensional topological insulator. The problem is addressed by means of two models, out which the first model is an effective continuum Hamiltonian for the surface states, whereas the Kane-Mele lattice model is our second approach. While both models result in drastic changes in the local density of electron states with increasing amplitude and frequency of the driving field, the linear...
May 22, 2010
In this paper we use the semiclassical Boltzmann equation to investigate the transport properties of Dirac fermion on the surface of topological insulator with magnetic impurities. The results obtained show that there is also a minimal conductivity in this system as in graphene. We also argue the low temperature transport property, and find that there is no low temperature anomaly known as Kondo effect when the temperature is T>10^{-6}K.
October 24, 2011
Topological insulators (TIs) are said to be stable against non-magnetic impurity scattering due to suppressed backscattering in the Dirac surface states. We solve a lattice model of a three-dimensional TI in the presence of strong potential impurities and find that both the Dirac point and low-energy states are significantly modified: low-energy impurity resonances are formed that produce a peak in the density of states near the Dirac point, which is destroyed and split into ...
October 5, 2023
We study the dynamics of a mobile impurity in a two-leg bosonic ladder. The impurity moves both along and across the legs and interacts with a bath of interacting bosonic particles present in the ladder. We use both analytical (Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid - TLL) and numerical (Density Matrix Renormalization Group - DMRG) methods to compute the Green's function of the impurity. We find that for a small impurity-bath interaction, the bonding mode of the impurity effectively coupl...
October 26, 2009
We calculate the modification of the local electronic structure caused by a local impurity on the surface of a 3D Topological Insulator. We find that the LDOS around the Dirac point of the electronic spectrum at the surface is significantly disrupted near the impurity by the creation of low-energy resonance state(s) -- however, this is not sufficient to (locally) destroy the Dirac point. We also calculate the non-trivial spin textures created near the magnetic impurities and ...
November 20, 2012
We discuss the excitation spectra around the Dirac node on a surface of a three-dimensional topological insulator. By using the diagrammatic expansion, we show that the coupling of an electron with the gauge field in the presence of impurity scatterings opens a gap around the Dirac node. The results are consistent with a recent experimental finding by T. Sato,et. al.[ Nature Phys. \textbf{7}, 840 (2011)]. We also discuss the consistency between the present results and the bul...
February 21, 2017
We address the electronic structure of the surface states of topological insulator thin films with embedded local non-magnetic and magnetic impurities. Using the $T$-matrix expansion of the real space Green's function, we derive the local density of electrons states and corresponding spin resolved densities. We show that the effects of the impurities can be tuned by applying an electric field between the surface layers. The emerging magnetic states are expected to play an imp...