Surface quantized anomalous Hall current and magneto-electric effect in magnetically disordered topological insulators

Abstract

We study theoretically the role of quenched magnetic disorder at the surface of a topological insulator by numerical simulation and scaling analysis. It is found that all the surface states are localized while the transverse conductivity is quantized to be $\pm \frac{e^2}{2h}$ as long as the Fermi energy is within the bulk gap. This greatly facilitates the realization of the topological magnetoelectric effect proposed by Qi {\it et al.} (Phys. Rev. B\textbf{78}, 195424 (2008)) with the surface magnetization direction being controlled by the simultaneous application of magnetic and electric fields .

5 pages, 4 figures

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• Topological Insulators with Inversion Symmetry
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Cited by in corpus (1)

• Anomalous Hall response of topological insulators