Photoemission of Bi${}_2$Se${}_3$ with Circularly Polarized Light: Probe of Spin Polarization or Means for Spin Manipulation?

Abstract

Topological insulators are characterized by Dirac cone surface states with electron spins aligned in the surface plane and perpendicular to their momenta. Recent theoretical and experimental work implied that this specific spin texture should enable control of photoelectron spins by circularly polarized light. However, these reports questioned the so far accepted interpretation of spin-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy. We solve this puzzle and show that vacuum ultraviolet photons (50-70 eV) with linear or circular polarization probe indeed the initial state spin texture of Bi${}_2$Se${}_3$ while circularly polarized 6 eV low energy photons flip the electron spins out of plane and reverse their spin polarization. Our photoemission calculations, considering the interplay between the varying probing depth, dipole selection rules and spin-dependent scattering effects involving initial and final states explain these findings, and reveal proper conditions for light-induced spin manipulation. This paves the way for future applications of topological insulators in opto-spintronic devices.

Submitted for publication (2013)

References in corpus (6)

• First direct observation of Spin-textures in Topological Insulators : Spin-resolved ARPES as a probe of topological quantum spin Hall effect and Berry's phase
• Coherent control of a single electron spin with electric fields
• Emergent quantum confinement at topological insulator surfaces
• Direct Measurement of the Out-of-Plane Spin Texture in the Dirac Cone Surface State of a Topological Insulator
• Spin Polarization of Photoelectrons from Topological Insulators
• Experimental setup for low-energy laser-based angle resolved photoemission spectroscopy

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