Excitons in topological Kondo insulators - theory of thermodynamic and transport anomalies in SmB${}_6$

Abstract

Kondo insulating materials lie outside the usual dichotomy of weakly versus correlated - band versus Mott - insulators. They are metallic at high temperatures but resemble band insulators at low temperatures because of the opening of an interaction induced band gap. The first discovered Kondo insulator (KI) SmB${}_6$ has been predicted to form a topological KI (TKI) which mimics a topological insulator at low temperatures. However, since its discovery thermodynamic and transport anomalies have been observed that have defied a theoretical explanation. Enigmatic signatures of collective modes inside the charge gap are seen in specific heat, thermal transport and quantum oscillation experiments in strong magnetic fields. Here, we show that TKIs are susceptible to the formation of excitons and magneto-excitons. These charge neutral composite particles can account for long-standing anomalies in SmB${}_6$ which is crucial for the identification of bulk topological signatures.

4.3 pages + supp. mat., 5 figures

References in corpus (7)

• Topological Insulators with Inversion Symmetry
• Correlated Topological Insulators with Mixed Valence
• Kondo Breakdown in Topological Kondo Insulators
• Interaction Driven Subgap Spin Exciton in the Kondo Insulator SmB6
• Magnetoplasmons excitations in graphene for filling factors $\nu \le 6$
• In-gap collective mode spectrum of the Topological Kondo Insulator SmB6
• Intra-Landau level magnetoexcitons and the transition between quantum Hall states in undoped bilayer graphene

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