Two-dimensional electronic transport on the surface of 3D topological insulators

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

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• Transport in two-dimensional topological materials: recent developments in experiment and theory
• Inter-band Coherence Response to Electric Fields in Crystals
• Quantum transport of two-species Dirac fermions in dual-gated three-dimensional topological insulators
• Diffusive Quantum Criticality in Three Dimensional Disordered Dirac Semimetals
• Giant Edelstein effect in Topological-Insulator--Graphene heterostructures
• Many-body effects and possible superconductivity in the 2D metallic surface states of 3D topological insulators
• Effect of bulk charged impurities on the bulk and surface transport in three-dimensional topological insulators
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• Power loss of hot Dirac fermions in silicene and its near equivalence with graphene
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• Substrate-limited helical edge states
• Dynamics of impurity in the environment of Dirac fermions