Surface-state spin textures in strained bulk HgTe: strain-induced topological phase transitions

Abstract

The opening of a band gap due to compressive uniaxial strain renders bulk HgTe a strong three-dimensional topological insulators with protected gapless surface states at any surface. By employing a six-band k.p model, we determine the spin textures of the topological surface states of strained HgTe using their close relations with the mirror Chern numbers of the system and the orbital composition of the surface states. We show that at surfaces with C2v point group symmetry an increase in the strain magnitude triggers a topological phase transition where the winding number of the surface state spin texture is flipped while the four topological invariants characterizing the bulk band structure of the material are unchanged.

6 pages, 6 figures

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Cited by in corpus (7)

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• Prediction of Nontrivial Band Topology and Superconductivity in Mg${}_2$Pb
• Strain-gradient induced topological transition in bent nanoribbons of the Dirac semimetal Cd3As2
• Structure of surface electronic states in strained mercury telluride
• Engineering axion insulator phase in superlattices with inversion symmetry breaking
• Beyond spin-1/2: Multipolar spin-orbit coupling in noncentrosymmetric crystals with time-reversal symmetry