Kondo effect on the surface of 3D topological insulators: Signatures in scanning tunneling spectroscopy

Abstract

We investigate the scattering off dilute magnetic impurities placed on the surface of three-dimensional topological insulators. In the low-temperature limit, the impurity moments are Kondo-screened by the surface-state electrons, despite their exotic locking of spin and momentum. We determine signatures of the Kondo effect appearing in quasiparticle interference (QPI) patterns as recorded by scanning tunneling spectroscopy, taking into account the full energy dependence of the T matrix as well as the hexagonal warping of the surface Dirac cones. We identify a universal energy dependence of the QPI signal at low scanning energies as the fingerprint of Kondo physics, markedly different from the signal due to non-magnetic or static magnetic impurities. Finally, we discuss our results in the context of recent experimental data.

9 pages, 9 figures

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Cited by in corpus (14)

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• Kondo holes in topological Kondo insulators: Spectral properties and surface quasiparticle interference
• Dirac fermions and Kondo effect
• Kondo effect in twisted bilayer graphene
• Spatial structure of correlations around a quantum impurity at the edge of a two-dimensional topological insulator
• Critical quasiparticles in single-impurity and lattice Kondo models
• Quasiparticle interference in altermagnets
• Electrically tunable Kondo effect as a direct measurement of the chiral anomaly in disorder Weyl semimetals
• Non-Hermitian Numerical Renormalization Group: Solution of the non-Hermitian Kondo model
• Two-channel charge-Kondo physics in graphene quantum dots
• Spin relaxation and the Kondo effect in transition metal dichalcogenide monolayers