Photon dressed electronic states in topological insulators: Tunneling and conductance

Abstract

The surface bound electronic states of three-dimensional topological insulators, as well as the edge states in two-dimensional topological insulators, are investigated in the presence of a circularly polarized light. The strong coupling between electrons and photons is found t o give rise to an energy gap as well as a unique energy dispersion of the dressed states, different from both graphene and conventional two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG). The effects of electron-photon interaction, barrier height and width on the electron tunneling through a p-n junction and on the ballistic conductance in topological insulators are demonstrated by numerical calculations. A critical energy for an incident electron to tunnel perfectly through a barrier is predicted, where electrons behave as either massless Dirac-like or massive Schrodinger-like particles above or below this threshold value. Additionally, these effects are compared with those in zigzag graphene nanoribbons and a 2DEG. Both the similarities and the differences are demonstrated and explained.

References in corpus (10)

• The electronic properties of graphene
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• Chiral tunneling and the Klein paradox in graphene
• Photovoltaic Hall effect in graphene
• Electronic States of Graphene Nanoribbons
• Quantum-limited shot noise in graphene
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• Control over topological insulator photocurrents with light polarization
• Finite size effects of helical edge states in HgTe/CdTe quantum wells
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• Exploring the Optical States for Black Phosphorus: Anisotropy and Bandgap Tuning
• Many-Body Effects and Optical Properties of Single- and Double Layer $\alpha$-${\mathcal{T}}_3$ Lattices
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• All-optical control of excitons in semiconductor quantum wells
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• Developing a semiclassical Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin theory for $\alpha -{\mathcal{T}}_3$ model
• Role of electron back action on photons in hybridizing double-layer graphene plasmons with localized photons
• Effects of site asymmetry and valley mixing on Hofstadter-type spectra of bilayer graphene in a square-scatter array potential
• Optical trapping of electrons in graphene
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