Strong potential impurities on the surface of a topological insulator

Abstract

Topological insulators (TIs) are said to be stable against non-magnetic impurity scattering due to suppressed backscattering in the Dirac surface states. We solve a lattice model of a three-dimensional TI in the presence of strong potential impurities and find that both the Dirac point and low-energy states are significantly modified: low-energy impurity resonances are formed that produce a peak in the density of states near the Dirac point, which is destroyed and split into two nodes that move off-center. The impurity-induced states penetrate up to 10 layers into the bulk of the TI. These findings demonstrate the importance of bulk states for the stability of TIs and how they can destroy the topological protection of the surface.

4+ pages, 3 figures. Published version

References in corpus (3)

• Superconducting proximity effect and Majorana fermions at the surface of a topological insulator
• Topological Surface States Protected From Backscattering by Chiral Spin Texture
• Disorder Induced Localized States in Graphene

Cited by in corpus (59)

• Dirac materials
• Large magnetic gap at the Dirac point in a Mn-induced Bi${}_2$Te${}_3$ heterostructure
• Landau quantization and the thickness limit of topological insulator thin films of Sb2Te3
• Quantum interference and Aharonov-Bohm oscillations in topological insulators
• Transport in two-dimensional topological materials: recent developments in experiment and theory
• Magnon Dirac materials
• Nonmagnetic band gap at the Dirac point of the magnetic topological insulator (Bi${}_{1-x}$Mn${}_x{)}_2$Se${}_3$
• The fate of topological-insulator surface states under strong disorder
• Dual nature of magnetic dopants and competing trends in topological insulators
• Failure of conductance quantization in two-dimensional topological insulators due to non-magnetic impurities
• 2D transport and screening in topological insulator surface states
• Filling of magnetic-impurity-induced gap in topological insulators by potential scattering
• Subsurface impurities and vacancies in a three-dimensional topological insulator
• Disorder enabled band structure engineering of a topological insulator surface
• Spin Polarization of Gapped Dirac Surface States Near the Topological Phase Transition in TlBi(S1-xSex)2
• Surface-to-bulk scattering in topological insulator films
• Probing the wavefunction of the surface states in Bi${}_2$Se${}_3$ topological insulator: a realistic tight-binding approach
• Stability of Weyl metals under impurity scattering
• Exact edge, bulk and bound states of finite topological systems
• Inelastic Electron Tunneling Spectroscopy for Topological Insulators
• Band Structure of Topological Insulator BiSbTe1.25Se1.75
• Spin and Charge Transport of Multi-Orbital Quantum Spin Hall Insulators
• Microscopic effects of Dy-doping in the topological insulator Bi2Te3
• Impurity scattering on the surface of topological insulator thin films
• Impurity scattering in Weyl Semimetals and their stability classification
• Anomalous behavior of the electronic structure of (Bi${}_{1-x}$In${}_x$)${}_2$Se${}_3$ across the quantum-phase transition from topological to trivial insulator
• In-gap impurity states as the hallmark of the Quantum Spin Hall phase
• Kondo holes in topological Kondo insulators: Spectral properties and surface quasiparticle interference
• Engineered Near-Perfect Back-Scattering on Surface of Topological Insulator with Non-Magnetic Impurities
• Electronic states induced by nonmagnetic defects in two-dimensional topological insulators
• Proximity Effects in Topological Insulator Heterostructures
• Quantum impurity in the bulk of topological insulator
• Spontaneous gap generation on the surface of weakly interacting topological insulators using nonmagnetic impurities
• Effects of short-range electron-electron interactions in doped graphene
• Coupling-decoupling of conducting topological surface states in thick Bi${}_2$Se${}_3$ single crystals
• Instability of the topological surface state in Bi${}_2$Se${}_3$ upon deposition of gold
• Non-magnetic defects in the bulk of two-dimensional topological insulators
• Connection topology of step edge state bands at the surface of a three dimensional topological insulator
• Symplectic large-N theory of topological heavy-fermion semiconductors
• Robust Gapless Surface State against Surface Magnetic Impurities on (Bi${}_{0.5}$Sb${}_{0.5}$)${}_2$Te${}_3$ Evidenced by In Situ Magnetotransport Measurements
• Residual gas absorption effect on the electronic structure of Cr-doped Bi2Se3
• Spontaneous ferromagnetism and finite surface energy gap in the topological insulator Bi${}_2$Se${}_3$ from surface Bi$_\rm{Se}$ antisite defects
• Momentum relaxation effects in 2D-Xene field effect device structures
• Bound states and controllable currents on Topological Insulator surfaces with extended magnetic defects
• Optical transitions in two-dimensional topological insulators with point defects
• Dynamics of impurity in the environment of Dirac fermions
• Theory of multiple magnetic scattering for quasiparticles on a gapless topological insulator surface
• Dirac node engineering and flat bands in doped Dirac materials
• Non-linear hybrid surface-defect states in defective Bi${}_2$Se${}_3$
• Electron scattering by magnetic impurity in Weyl semimetals
• Time-dependent potential impurity in topological insulator
• Doping-controlled surface conduction in topological insulators with warping effects
• Distinct quasiparticle interference patterns for surface impurity scattering on various Weyl semimetals
• Highly tunable magnetic coupling in ultrathin topological insulator films due to impurity resonances
• Impurity-potential-induced gap at the Dirac point of topological insulators with in-plane magnetization
• In-gap states of magnetic impurity in quantum spin Hall insulator proximitized to a superconductor
• Quantum Fractality on the Surface of Topological Insulators
• The Coulomb impurity in 2D materials with strong spin-orbit interaction
• Current response of a topological insulator to a static Zeeman field