Bulk and surface electron scattering in disordered Bi${}_2$Te${}_3$ probed by quasiparticle interference

Abstract

We investigated the electronic properties of the topological insulator Bi${}_2$Te${}_3$ by scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy at low temperature. We obtained high-resolution quasiparticle interference data of the topological surface Dirac electrons at different energies. Spin-selective joint density of states calculations were performed for surface and bulk electronic states to interpret the observed quasiparticle interference data. The topological properties of our crystals are demonstrated by the absence of backscattering along with the linear energy dispersion of the dominant scattering vector. In addition, we detect non-dispersive scattering modes which we associate with bulk-surface scattering and, thus, allow an approximate identification of the bulk energy gap range based on our quasiparticle interference data. Measurements of differential conductance maps in magnetic fields up to 15 T have been carried out, but no strong modifications could be observed.

14 pages, 22 figures

References in corpus (6)

• Discovery (theoretical prediction and experimental observation) of a large-gap topological-insulator class with spin-polarized single-Dirac-cone on the surface
• Topological Surface States Protected From Backscattering by Chiral Spin Texture
• Imaging the Fano Lattice to 'Hidden Order' Transition in URu2Si2
• Visualizing heavy fermions emerging in a quantum critical Kondo lattice
• Direct Measurement of the Out-of-Plane Spin Texture in the Dirac Cone Surface State of a Topological Insulator
• Signatures of Dirac fermion-mediated magnetic order

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Quasiparticle interference on the surface of Bi${}_2$Se${}_3$ terminated (PbSe)${}_5$(Bi${}_2$Se${}_3$)${}_6$