Quantum Fractality on the Surface of Topological Insulators

Abstract

Three-dimensional topological insulators support gapless Dirac fermion surface states whose rich topological properties result from the interplay of symmetries and dimensionality. Their topological properties have been extensively studied in systems of integer spatial dimension but the prospect of these surface electrons arranging into structures of non-integer dimension like fractals remains unexplored. In this work, we investigate a new class of states arising from the coupling of surface Dirac fermions to a time-reversal symmetric fractal potential, which breaks translation symmetry while retaining self-similarity. Employing large-scale exact diagonalization, scaling analysis of the inverse participation ratio, and the box-counting method, we establish the onset of self-similar Dirac fermions with fractal dimension for a symmetry-preserving surface potential with the geometry of a Sierpinski carpet fractal with fractal dimension $D\approx 1.89$. Dirac fractal surface states open a fruitful avenue to explore exotic regimes of transport and quantum information storage in topological systems with fractal dimensionality.

10 pages, 7 figures

References in corpus (7)

• Anderson Transitions
• Disorder-induced Floquet Topological Insulators
• Photonic Floquet topological insulators in a fractal lattice
• Topological protection, disorder, and interactions: Survival at the surface of 3D topological superconductors
• Scattering of two-dimensional massless Dirac electrons by a circular potential barrier
• Optical conductivity of a quantum electron gas in a Sierpinski carpet
• Unconventional Self-Similar Hofstadter Superconductivity from Repulsive Interactions