Electric field driven quantum phase transition between band insulator and topological insulator

Abstract

We demonstrate theoretically that electric field can drive a quantum phase transition between band insulator to topological insulator in CdTe/HgCdTe/CdTe quantum wells. The numerical results suggest that the electric field could be used as a switch to turn on or off the topological insulator phase, and temperature can affect significantly the phase diagram for different gate voltage and compositions. Our theoretical results provide us an efficient way to manipulate the quantum phase of HgTe quantum wells.

4 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (4)

• Quantum Spin Hall Effect and Topological Phase Transition in HgTe Quantum Wells
• Quantum Spin Hall Insulator State in HgTe Quantum Wells
• First direct observation of Spin-textures in Topological Insulators : Spin-resolved ARPES as a probe of topological quantum spin Hall effect and Berry's phase
• Intrinsic Spin Hall Effect Induced by Quantum Phase Transition in HgCdTe Quantum Wells

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