Electrons on the surface of Bi2Se3 form a topologically-ordered two dimensional gas with a non-trivial Berry's phase

Abstract

The interface between a superconductor and a topological insulator has been proposed to harbor novel quasiparticles that realize physical schemes for fault-tolerant quantum computation. Here, we present high resolution angle-resolved photoemission experimental results, which along with first principles calculations, suggest that the surface-edge states of Bi2Se3 form a topological 2D metal. When magnetic atoms are deposited, the surface tends to lose Kramers' degeneracy and a k-space connection thread between the bulk valence and conduction bands is lost. Our observed states carry a πBerry's phase suggesting that although the real materials are often electron doped fully undoped Bi2Se3 would be a Z2 topological insulator at room temperature.

11 pages and 5 figures

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Topological insulators and superconductors
• p-type Bi2Se3 for topological insulator and low temperature thermoelectric applications
• A topological insulator surface under strong Coulomb, magnetic and disorder perturbations
• Topological Phase Transition and Texture Inversion in a Tunable Topological Insulator
• First observation of spin-helical Dirac fermions and topological phases in undoped and doped Bi2Te3 demonstrated by spin-ARPES spectroscopy
• Large phase relaxation length in the topological surface states of epitaxial Bi2-xSnxTe3 thin films