Disorder and magnetic-field induced breakdown of helical edge conduction in an inverted electron-hole bilayer

Abstract

We calculate the conductance of a two-dimensional bilayer with inverted electron-hole bands, to study the sensitivity of the quantum spin Hall insulator (with helical edge conduction) to the combination of electrostatic disorder and a perpendicular magnetic field. The characteristic breakdown field for helical edge conduction splits into two fields with increasing disorder, a field $B_c$ for the transition into a quantum Hall insulator (supporting chiral edge conduction) and a smaller field $B_c^{\prime }$ for the transition to bulk conduction in a quasi-metallic regime. The spatial separation of the inverted bands, typical for broken-gap InAs/GaSb quantum wells, is essential for the magnetic-field induced bulk conduction --- there is no such regime in HgTe quantum wells.

4 pages, 6 figures; Corrected a factor of two error in the magnetic field scale and effective g-factor

References in corpus (6)

• Quantum Spin Hall Effect and Topological Phase Transition in HgTe Quantum Wells
• Quantum Spin Hall Insulator State in HgTe Quantum Wells
• Quantum Spin Hall Effect in Inverted Type II Semiconductors
• Topological Anderson Insulator
• Magnetic properties of HgTe quantum wells
• Magnetic field induced localization in 2D topological insulators

Cited by in corpus (22)

• The Anomalous de Haas-van Alphen Effect in InAs/GaSb quantum wells
• Probing topological transitions in HgTe/CdTe quantum wells by magneto-optical measurements
• Gapless insulating edges of dirty interacting topological insulators
• Phase-tunable thermal rectification in the topological SQUIPT
• Phase-coherent caloritronics with ordinary and topological Josephson junctions
• Hidden edge Dirac point and robust quantum edge transport in InAs/GaSb quantum wells
• The effect of in-plane magnetic field and applied strain in quantum spin Hall systems: application to InAs/GaSb quantum wells
• Stability of Periodically Driven Topological Phases against Disorder
• Magnetotransport in disordered two-dimensional topological insulators: signatures of charge puddles
• A Topological SQUIPT based on helical edge states in proximity to superconductors
• Probing helicity and the topological origins of helicity via non-local Hanbury-Brown and Twiss correlations
• Indirect exchange interaction between magnetic impurities in the two-dimensional topological insulator based on CdTe/HgTe/CdTe quantum wells
• Confinement-deconfinement transition due to spontaneous symmetry breaking in quantum Hall bilayers
• Controlling spin polarization of a quantum dot via a helical edge state
• Effects of disorder on electron tunneling through helical edge states
• Interplay of quantum spin Hall effect and spontaneous time-reversal symmetry breaking in electron-hole bilayers I: Transport properties
• Topological Charge/spin density Wave in InAs/GaSb Quantum Wells under an In-plane Magnetic Field
• Sub- to Super-Poissonian crossover of current noise in helical edge states coupled to a spin impurity in a magnetic field
• Magneto-Induced Topological Phase Transition in Inverted InAs/GaSb Bilayers
• Transport signatures of a quantum spin Hall - chiral topological superconductor junction
• Bulk transport through superconducting hybrid structures in HgTe quantum wells
• Finite-temperature spectroscopy of dirty helical Luttinger liquids