Spontaneous gap generation on the surface of weakly interacting topological insulators using nonmagnetic impurities

Abstract

Strong nonmagnetic impurities on the surface of three-dimensional topological insulators (TIs) generate localized resonance peaks close to the Dirac point. We show that this results in a strongly reduced critical Coulomb interaction strength to reach a magnetic surface state, following a Stoner-like criterion. Thus even weakly interacting TIs host a finite (local) magnetization around strong nonmagnetic impurities. The local magnetization gives rise to a global energy gap, linearly dependent on the maximum value of the magnetization but decreasing with reduced impurity concentration.

arXiv comment4.5 pages + 1 page supplementary material, 3 figures

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Cited by in corpus (11)

• Failure of conductance quantization in two-dimensional topological insulators due to non-magnetic impurities
• Filling of magnetic-impurity-induced gap in topological insulators by potential scattering
• Disorder enabled band structure engineering of a topological insulator surface
• Current-induced gap opening in interacting topological insulator surfaces
• Optically tunable spin transport on the surface of a topological insulator
• Effects of short-range electron-electron interactions in doped graphene
• Spectromicroscopic measurement of surface and bulk band structure interplay in a disordered topological insulator
• Connection topology of step edge state bands at the surface of a three dimensional topological insulator
• Spontaneous ferromagnetism and finite surface energy gap in the topological insulator Bi${}_2$Se${}_3$ from surface Bi$_\rm{Se}$ antisite defects
• Topological insulator homojunctions including magnetic layers: the example of n-p type ($n$-QLs Bi${}_2$Se${}_3$/Mn-Bi${}_2$Se${}_3$) heterostructures
• Dirac node engineering and flat bands in doped Dirac materials