Coherent topological transport on the surface of Bi2Se3

Dohun Kim, Paul Syers, Nicholas P. Butch, Johnpierre Paglione and Michael S. Fuhrer ()
Additional contact information
Dohun Kim: Center for Nanophysics and Advanced Materials, University of Maryland
Paul Syers: Center for Nanophysics and Advanced Materials, University of Maryland
Nicholas P. Butch: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Johnpierre Paglione: Center for Nanophysics and Advanced Materials, University of Maryland
Michael S. Fuhrer: Center for Nanophysics and Advanced Materials, University of Maryland

Nature Communications, 2013, vol. 4, issue 1, 1-5

Abstract: Abstract The two-dimensional surface of the three-dimensional topological insulator is in the symplectic universality class and should exhibit perfect weak antilocalization reflected in positive weak-field magneto-resistance. Previous studies in topological insulator thin films suffer from high level of bulk n-type doping making quantitative analysis of weak antilocalization difficult. Here we measure the magneto-resistance of bulk-insulating Bi2Se3 thin films as a function of film thickness and gate-tuned carrier density. For thick samples, the magnitude of weak antilocalization indicates two decoupled (top and bottom) symplectic surfaces. On reducing thickness, we observe first a crossover to a single symplectic channel, indicating coherent coupling of top and bottom surfaces via interlayer tunnelling, and second, a complete suppression of weak antilocalization. The first crossover is governed by the ratio of phase coherence time to the inter-surface tunnelling time, and the second crossover occurs when the hybridization gap becomes comparable to the disorder strength.

Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms3040 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:4:y:2013:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms3040

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms3040

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().