Effects of disorder on electron tunneling through helical edge states

Abstract

A tunnel junction between helical edge states, realized via a constriction in a Quantum Spin Hall system, can be exploited to steer both charge and spin current into various terminals. We investigate the effects of disorder on the transmission coefficient $T_p$ of the junction, by modelling disorder with a randomly varying (complex) tunneling amplitude ${\Gamma }_p=|{\Gamma }_p|\exp [i{\varphi }_p]$. We show that, while for a clean junction $T_p$ is only determined by the absolute value $|{\Gamma }_p|$ and is independent of the phase ${\varphi }_p$, the situation can be quite different in the presence of disorder: phase fluctuations may dramatically affect the energy dependence of $T_p$ of any single sample. Furthermore, analysing three different models for phase disorder (including correlated ones), we show that not only the amount but also the way the phase ${\varphi }_p$ fluctuates determines the localisation length ${\xi }_{loc}$ and the sample-averaged transmission. Finally, we discuss the physical conditions in which these three models suitably apply to realistic cases.

14 pages, 7 figures

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• Fabry-Pérot resonant vortices and magnetoconductance in topological insulator constrictions with magnetic barriers