Backscattering of Dirac fermions in HgTe quantum wells with a finite gap

Abstract

The density-dependent mobility of n-type HgTe quantum wells with inverted band ordering has been studied both experimentally and theoretically. While semiconductor heterostructures with a parabolic dispersion exhibit an increase in mobility with carrier density, high quality HgTe quantum wells exhibit a distinct mobility maximum. We show that this mobility anomaly is due to backscattering of Dirac fermions from random fluctuations of the band gap (Dirac mass). Our findings open new avenues for the study of Dirac fermion transport with finite and random mass, which so far has been hard to access.

version as published in Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 076802 (2011)

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Cited by in corpus (25)

• Observation of the universal magnetoelectric effect in a 3D topological insulator
• Transport in three-dimensional topological insulators: theory and experiment
• Weak antilocalization in HgTe quantum wells and topological surface states: Massive versus massless Dirac fermions
• Quantum transport of two-species Dirac fermions in dual-gated three-dimensional topological insulators
• Spin-helical transport in normal and superconducting topological insulators
• Linear magnetoresistance in HgTe quantum wells
• Realistic picture of helical edge states in HgTe quantum wells
• Room temperature electrically tunable broadband terahertz Faraday effect
• Cyclotron resonance of single valley Dirac fermions in gapless HgTe quantum well
• Dynamical separation of bulk and edge transport in HgTe-based 2D topological insulators
• Anomalous galvanomagnetism, cyclotron resonance and microwave spectroscopy of topological insulators
• Chiral Majorana edge states in HgTe quantum wells
• Interplay of chiral and helical states in a Quantum Spin Hall Insulator lateral junction
• Transition between ordinary and topological insulator regimes in two-dimensional resonant magnetotransport
• Helical edge states in multiple topological mass domains
• Giant $g$-factors and fully spin-polarized states in metamorphic short-period InAsSb/InSb superlattices
• Weak localization of Dirac fermions in graphene beyond the diffusion regime
• Terahertz cyclotron emission from two-dimensional Dirac fermions
• Disorder-induced phase transition in Dirac systems beyond the linear approximation
• One-dimensional weak antilocalization and band Berry phases in HgTe wires
• Superradiant and transport lifetimes of the cyclotron resonance in the topological insulator HgTe
• Two-dimensional topological insulators in quantizing magnetic fields
• Modeling of electron energy spectra and mobilities in semi-metallic Hg1-xCdxTe quantum wells
• Conformal QED in two-dimensional topological insulators
• Zener tunneling isospin Hall effect in HgTe quantum wells and graphene multilayers