Interplay of orbital effects and nanoscale strain in topological crystalline insulators

Abstract

Orbital degrees of freedom can have pronounced effects on the fundamental properties of electrons in solids. In addition to influencing bandwidths, gaps, correlation strength and dispersion, orbital effects have also been implicated in generating novel electronic and structural phases, such as Jahn-Teller effect and colossal magnetoresistance. In this work, we show for the first time how the orbital nature of bands can result in non-trivial effects of strain on the band structure. We use scanning tunneling microscopy and quasiparticle interference imaging to study the effects of strain on the electronic structure of a heteroepitaxial thin film of a topological crystalline insulator, SnTe. We find a surprising effect where strain applied in one direction affects the band structure in the perpendicular direction. Our theoretical calculations indicate that this effect directly arises from the orbital nature of the conduction and valance bands. Our results imply that a microscopic model capturing strain effects on the band structure must include a consideration of the orbital nature of the bands.

References in corpus (6)

• Topological Crystalline Insulators
• Strain-induced partially flat band, helical snake states, and interface superconductivity in topological crystalline insulators
• Dirac mass generation from crystal symmetry breaking on the surfaces of topological crystalline insulators
• Strain engineering Dirac surface states in heteroepitaxial topological crystalline insulator thin films
• Spin-polarized (001) surface states of the topological crystalline insulator Pb_{0.73}Sn_{0.27}Se
• Direct observation and temperature control of the surface Dirac gap in the topological crystalline insulator (Pb,Sn)Se

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• Atomically-precise engineering of spin-orbit polarons in a kagome magnetic Weyl semimetal
• Nanoscale visualization of the thermally-driven evolution of antiferromagnetic domains in FeTe thin films
• Strain effects in twisted spiral antimonene
• Rotation of the dislocation grid in multilayer FeSe films and visualization of electronic nematic domains via orbital-selective tunneling
• Correlated electrons in a Crystalline Topological insulator
• Nanoscale strain manipulation of smectic susceptibility in kagome superconductors
• Valley polarization of Landau levels driven by residual strain in the ZrSiS surface band
• Delusive chirality and periodic strain pattern in moiré systems
• Anomalies in the temperature evolution of the Dirac states in a topological crystalline insulator SnTe
• Proximity-Induced Superconductivity in a Topological Crystalline Insulator