Topological Signatures in the Electronic Structure of Graphene Spirals
arXiv:1301.2226 · doi:10.1038/srep01632
Abstract
Topology is familiar mostly from mathematics, but also natural sciences have found its concepts useful. Those concepts have been used to explain several natural phenomena in biology and physics, and they are particularly relevant for the electronic structure description of topological insulators and graphene systems. Here, we introduce topologically distinct graphene forms - graphene spirals - and employ density-functional theory to investigate their geometric and electronic properties. We found that the spiral topology gives rise to an intrinsic Rashba spin-orbit splitting. Through a Hamiltonian constrained by space curvature, graphene spirals have topologically protected states due to time-reversal symmetry. In addition, we argue that the synthesis of such graphene spirals is feasible and can be achieved through advanced bottom-up experimental routes that we indicate in this work.
References in corpus (12)
- Quantum Spin Hall Effect and Topological Phase Transition in HgTe Quantum Wells
- Topological Insulators with Inversion Symmetry
- Intrinsic and Rashba Spin-orbit Interactions in Graphene Sheets
- Topological Surface States Protected From Backscattering by Chiral Spin Texture
- Intervalley scattering, long-range disorder, and effective time reversal symmetry breaking in graphene
- Reduction of Fermi velocity in folded graphene observed by resonance Raman spectroscopy
- Manipulation of Spin Transport in Graphene by Surface Chemical Doping
- Graphene wormholes: A condensed matter illustration of Dirac fermions in curved space
- Twisting Graphene Nanoribbons into Carbon Nanotubes
- Graphene on incommensurate substrates: trigonal warping and emerging Dirac cone replicas with halved group velocity
- Structural, chemical and dynamical trends in graphene grain boundaries
- Bloch's theory in periodic structures with Rashba's spin-orbit interaction