Revealing topological Dirac fermions at the surface of strained HgTe thin films via Quantum Hall transport spectroscopy

Abstract

We demonstrate evidences of electronic transport via topological Dirac surface states in a thin film of strained HgTe. At high perpendicular magnetic fields, we show that the electron transport reaches the quantum Hall regime with vanishing resistance. Furthermore, quantum Hall transport spectroscopy reveals energy splittings of relativistic Landau levels specific to coupled Dirac surface states. This study provides new insights in the quantum Hall effect of topological insulator (TI) slabs, in the cross-over regime between two- and three-dimensional TIs, and in the relevance of thin TI films to explore novel circuit functionalities in spintronics and quantum nanoelectronics.

References in corpus (6)

• Quantum Spin Hall Insulator State in HgTe Quantum Wells
• Three dimensional topological invariants for time reversal invariant Hamiltonians and the three dimensional quantum spin Hall effect
• The Quantum Spin Hall Effect: Theory and Experiment
• Observation of topological surface state quantum Hall effect in an intrinsic three-dimensional topological insulator
• Single valley Dirac fermions in zero-gap HgTe quantum wells
• Quantum-Hall activation gaps in graphene

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Highly efficient spin-to-charge current conversion at room temperature in strained HgTe surface states
• Quantum Hall effect and Landau levels in the 3D topological insulator HgTe
• Bilinear magnetoresistance in HgTe topological insulator: opposite signs at opposite interfaces demonstrated by gate control
• Terahertz photoresistivity of a high-mobility 3D topological insulator based on a strained HgTe film
• Structure of surface electronic states in strained mercury telluride
• Hybridization of topological surface states with a flat band