Quantized Anomalous Hall Effect in Magnetic Topological Insulators

Abstract

The Hall effect, the anomalous Hall effect and the spin Hall effect are fundamental transport processes in solids arising from the Lorentz force and the spin-orbit coupling respectively. The quantum versions of the Hall effect and the spin Hall effect have been discovered in recent years. However, the quantized anomalous Hall (QAH) effect has not yet been realized experimentally. In a QAH insulator, spontaneous magnetic moments and spin-orbit coupling combine to give rise to a topologically non-trivial electronic structure, leading to the quantized Hall effect without any external magnetic field. In this work, based on state-of-art first principles calculations, we predict that the tetradymite semiconductors Bi${}_2$Te${}_3$, Bi${}_2$Se${}_3$, and Sb${}_2$Te${}_3$ form magnetically ordered insulators when doped with transition metal elements (Cr or Fe), in sharp contrast to conventional dilute magnetic semiconductor where free carriers are necessary to mediate the magnetic coupling. Magnetic order in two-dimensional thin films gives rise to a topological electronic structure characterized by a finite Chern number, with quantized Hall conductance $e^2/h$. Experimental realization of the long sought-after QAH insulator state could enable robust dissipationless charge transport at room temperature.

19 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (6)

• Quantum Spin Hall Effect and Topological Phase Transition in HgTe Quantum Wells
• Quantum Spin Hall Insulator State in HgTe Quantum Wells
• Discovery (theoretical prediction and experimental observation) of a large-gap topological-insulator class with spin-polarized single-Dirac-cone on the surface
• Dissipationless Quantum Spin Current at Room Temperature
• Theory of ferromagnetic (III,Mn)V semiconductors
• Quantum Anomalous Hall Effect in Hg${}_{1-y}$Mn${}_y$Te Quantum Wells

Cited by in corpus (10)

• Quantum Anomalous Hall Effect in Graphene from Rashba and Exchange Effects
• Topological origin of subgap conductance in insulating bilayer graphene
• Two-dimensional Dirac fermions in a topological insulator: transport in the quantum limit
• Tunable Surface Conductivity in Bi2Se3 Revealed in Diffusive Electron Transport
• Epitaxial growth of topological insulator Bi2Se3 film on Si(111) with atomically sharp interface
• Theoretical prediction of topological insulator in ternary rare earth chalcogenides
• Quantum anomalous Hall states in the $p$-orbital honeycomb optical lattices
• Anomalous Hall response of topological insulators
• Probing surface states of topological insulator: Kondo effect and Friedel oscillation under magnetic field
• Spin Susceptibility and Helical Magnetic Orders at the Edges/Surfaces of Topological Insulators Due to Fermi Surface Nesting