Two-dimensional electronic transport on the surface of 3D topological insulators
arXiv:1211.1970 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.86.235443
Abstract
We present a theoretical approach to describe the 2D transport properties of the surfaces of three dimensional topological insulators (3DTIs) including disorder and phonon scattering effects. The method that we present is able to take into account the effects of the strong disorder-induced carrier density inhomogeneities that characterize the ground state of the surface of 3DTIs, especially at low doping, as recently shown experimentally. Due to the inhomogeneous nature of the carrier density landscape, standard theoretical techniques based on ensemble averaging over disorder assuming a spatially uniform average carrier density are inadequate. Moreover the presence of strong spatial potential and density fluctuations greatly enhance the effect of thermally activated processes on the transport properties. The theory presented is able to take into account all the effects due to the disorder-induced inhomogeneities, momentum scattering by disorder, and the effect of electron-phonon scattering processes. As a result the developed theory is able to accurately describe the transport properties of the surfaces of 3DTIs both at zero and finite temperature.
14 pages, 18 figures
References in corpus (28)
- Electric Field Effect in Atomically Thin Carbon Films
- Superconducting proximity effect and Majorana fermions at the surface of a topological insulator
- Chiral tunneling and the Klein paradox in graphene
- Discovery (theoretical prediction and experimental observation) of a large-gap topological-insulator class with spin-polarized single-Dirac-cone on the surface
- A topological Dirac insulator in a quantum spin Hall phase : Experimental observation of first strong topological insulator
- Topological Field Theory of Time-Reversal Invariant Insulators
- Dielectric function, screening, and plasmons in 2D graphene
- Andreev reflection and Klein tunneling in graphene
- A self-consistent theory for graphene transport
- Quantum interference and Klein tunneling in graphene heterojunctions
- Acoustic phonon scattering limited carrier mobility in 2D extrinsic graphene
- Evidence of Klein tunneling in graphene p-n junctions
- Strong surface scattering in ultrahigh mobility Bi2Se3 topological insulator crystals
- Tuning the effective fine structure constant in graphene: opposing effects of dielectric screening on short- and long-range potential scattering
- Klein Backscattering and Fabry-Perot Interference in Graphene Heterojunctions
- Spatially resolved spectroscopy of monolayer graphene on SiO2
- Collective modes of the massless Dirac plasma
- Ground-state of graphene in the presence of random charged impurities
- Spatially resolved femtosecond pump-probe study of topological insulator Bi2Se3
- Density-Functional Theory of Graphene Sheets
- Effect of disorder on a graphene p-n junction
- Theory of charged impurity scattering in two dimensional graphene
- Effective medium theory for disordered two-dimensional graphene
- Intrinsic Electron-Phonon Resistivity in Bi2Se3 in the Topological Regime
- Electron-phonon scattering in topological insulators
- Statistics of random voltage fluctuations and the low-density residual conductivity of graphene
- Chirality-dependent phonon-limited resistivity in multiple layers of graphene
- Insulating behavior in metallic bilayer graphene: Interplay between density inhomogeneity and temperature