Giant magnetochiral anisotropy from quantum confined surface states of topological insulator nanowires

Abstract

Wireless technology relies on the conversion of alternating electromagnetic fields to direct currents, a process known as rectification. While rectifiers are normally based on semiconductor diodes, quantum mechanical non-reciprocal transport effects that enable highly controllable rectification have recently been discovered. One such effect is magnetochiral anisotropy (MCA), where the resistance of a material or a device depends on both the direction of current flow and an applied magnetic field. However, the size of rectification possible due to MCA is usually extremely small, because MCA relies on inversion symmetry breaking leading to the manifestation of spin-orbit coupling, which is a relativistic effect. In typical materials the rectification coefficient $\gamma$ due to MCA is usually $|\gamma |\lesssim 1$ ${\mathrm{A}}^{-1}{\mathrm{T}}^{-1}$ and the maximum values reported so far are $|\gamma |\sim 100$ ${\mathrm{A}}^{-1}{\mathrm{T}}^{-1}$ in carbon nanotubes and ZrTe${}_5$. Here, to overcome this limitation, we artificially break inversion symmetry via an applied gate voltage in thin topological insulator (TI) nanowire heterostructures and theoretically predict that such a symmetry breaking can lead to a giant MCA effect. Our prediction is confirmed via experiments on thin bulk-insulating (Bi${}_{1-x}$Sb${}_x$)${}_2$Te${}_3$ TI nanowires, in which we observe an MCA consistent with theory and $|\gamma |\sim 100000$ ${\mathrm{A}}^{-1}{\mathrm{T}}^{-1}$, the largest ever reported MCA rectification coefficient in a normal conductor.

7 pages of main text with 3 figures. This version of the article has been accepted for publication, after peer review, but is not the Version of Record and does not reflect post-acceptance improvements, or any corrections

References in corpus (10)

• A Josephson junction supercurrent diode
• Spin-selective Peierls transition in interacting one-dimensional conductors with spin-orbit interaction
• Large Unidirectional Magnetoresistance in a Magnetic Topological Insulator
• Anomalous Aharonov-Bohm conductance oscillations from topological insulator surface states
• Strong electrical magneto-chiral anisotropy in tellurium
• Resonant photovoltaic effect in doped magnetic semiconductors
• Charge puddles in the bulk and on the surface of the topological insulator BiSbTeSe${}_2$ studied by scanning tunneling microscopy and optical spectroscopy
• Majorana bound states in topological insulators without a vortex
• Enhanced photogalvanic effect in graphene due to Rashba spin-orbit coupling
• Disorder effects in topological insulator nanowires

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• Giant Magnetochiral Anisotropy in Weyl-semimetal WTe2 Induced by Diverging Berry Curvature
• Non-linear Transport in Non-centrosymmetric Systems: From Fundamentals to Applications
• Proximity-induced superconductivity in (Bi${}_{1-x}$Sb${}_x$)${}_2$Te${}_3$ topological-insulator nanowires
• Hole spin qubits in thin curved quantum wells
• Top-down fabrication of bulk-insulating topological insulator nanowires for quantum devices
• Interfering Josephson diode effect in Ta2Pd3Te5 asymmetric edge interferometer
• Large Bilinear Magnetoresistance from Rashba Spin-Splitting on the Surface of a Topological Insulator
• Signatures of a surface spin-orbital chiral metal
• Nonequilibrium Josephson diode effect in periodically driven SNS junctions
• Determination of spin-orbit interaction in semiconductor nanostructures via non-linear transport
• Gate-tunable giant superconducting nonreciprocal transport in few-layer $T_{\mathrm{d}}$-MoTe${}_2$
• Electrical Magnetochiral current in Tellurium
• Anomalous Nonlinear Magnetoconductivity in van der Waals Magnet CrSBr
• Nonlinear planar magnetotransport due to tilted Dirac cones in topological materials
• Nonreciprocal charge transport in polar Dirac metals with tunable spin-valley coupling
• Interband contributions to nonlinear transport in semiconductor nanostructures
• Quantum geometry and the electric magnetochiral anisotropy in noncentrosymmetric polar media
• Optical conductivity of a topological system driven using a realistic pulse
• Relations between normal state nonreciprocal transport and the superconducting diode effect in the trivial and topological phases
• Room temperature quantum metric effect in TbMn6Sn6