Subsurface impurities and vacancies in a three-dimensional topological insulator

Abstract

Using a three-dimensional microscopic lattice model of a strong topological insulator (TI) we study potential impurities and vacancies in surface and subsurface positions. For all impurity locations we find impurity-induced resonance states with energy proportional to the inverse of the impurity strength, although the impurity strength needed for a low-energy resonance state increases with the depth of the impurity. For strong impurities and vacancies as deep as 15 layers into the material, resonance peaks will appear at and around the Dirac point in the surface energy spectrum, splitting the original Dirac point into two nodes located off-center. Furthermore, we study vacancy clusters buried deep inside the bulk and find zero-energy resonance states for both single and multiple-site vacancies. Only fully symmetric multiple-site vacancy clusters show resonance states expelled from the bulk gap.

7 pages, 4 figures. Minor changes in v2

References in corpus (6)

• Topological insulators and superconductors
• Topological Surface States Protected From Backscattering by Chiral Spin Texture
• STM imaging of impurity resonances on Bi${}_2$Se${}_3$
• Strong potential impurities on the surface of a topological insulator
• Z2 invariant protected bound states in topological insulators
• Observation of Fermi-energy dependent unitary impurity resonances in a strong topological insulator Bi2Se3 with scanning tunneling spectroscopy

Cited by in corpus (32)

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• Spectromicroscopic measurement of surface and bulk band structure interplay in a disordered topological insulator
• Pushing the limit of quantum transport simulations
• Magnetic properties of Mn-doped Bi${}_2$Se${}_3$ topological insulators: ab initio calculations
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• Ab initio investigation of impurity-induced in-gap states in Bi${}_2$Te${}_3$ and Bi${}_2$Se${}_3$
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