Low temperature saturation of phase coherence length in topological insulators

Abstract

Implementing topological insulators as elementary units in quantum technologies requires a comprehensive understanding of the dephasing mechanisms governing the surface carriers in these materials, which impose a practical limit to the applicability of these materials in such technologies requiring phase coherent transport. To investigate this, we have performed magneto-resistance (MR) and conductance fluctuations\ (CF) measurements in both exfoliated and molecular beam epitaxy grown samples. The phase breaking length ($l_{\varphi }$) obtained from MR shows a saturation below sample dependent characteristic temperatures, consistent with that obtained from CF measurements. We have systematically eliminated several factors that may lead to such behavior of $l_{\varphi }$ in the context of TIs, such as finite size effect, thermalization, spin-orbit coupling length, spin-flip scattering, and surface-bulk coupling. Our work indicates the need to identify an alternative source of dephasing that dominates at low $T$ in topological insulators, causing saturation in the phase breaking length and time.

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• Weak Antilocalization and topological edge states in PdSn${}_4$
• Influence of magnetic and electric fields on universal conductance fluctuations in thin films of the Dirac semi-metal Cd3As2
• Signature of pseudo-diffusive transport in mesoscopic topological insulators
• Effects of disorder on the quantum transport properties in topologically nontrivial metal PbTaSe${}_2$
• Charge to spin conversion in atomically thin bismuth
• Sn2Pd: a possible superconducting material with topological surface states
• Charge qubits based on ultra-thin topological insulator films
• Image of the phonon spectrum in the 1/f noise of topological insulators