Topological surface states protected from backscattering by chiral spin texture

Pedram Roushan, Jungpil Seo, Colin V. Parker, Y. S. Hor, D. Hsieh, Dong Qian, Anthony Richardella, M. Z. Hasan, R. J. Cava and Ali Yazdani ()
Additional contact information
Pedram Roushan: Joseph Henry Laboratories & Department of Physics,
Jungpil Seo: Joseph Henry Laboratories & Department of Physics,
Colin V. Parker: Joseph Henry Laboratories & Department of Physics,
Y. S. Hor: Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, USA
D. Hsieh: Joseph Henry Laboratories & Department of Physics,
Dong Qian: Joseph Henry Laboratories & Department of Physics,
Anthony Richardella: Joseph Henry Laboratories & Department of Physics,
M. Z. Hasan: Joseph Henry Laboratories & Department of Physics,
R. J. Cava: Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, USA
Ali Yazdani: Joseph Henry Laboratories & Department of Physics,

Nature, 2009, vol. 460, issue 7259, 1106-1109

Abstract: Topological insulators: no turning back Topological insulators are materials in which a relativistic effect known as spin–orbit coupling gives rise to a bulk insulating gap and surface states that resemble so-called chiral edge states in the quantum Hall effect. It has been theoretically suggested that the quantum mechanical spin degree of freedom of such surface edge states may be protected against scattering due to topology, which could be useful for spintronics and quantum computing. Now Roushan et al. provide the experimental confirmation of this important prediction. Using scanning tunnelling and angle-resolved photoemission microscopy they are able to demonstrate that, despite strong atomic scale disorder in their system, backscattering between surface states with opposite momentum and opposite spin is absent.

Date: 2009
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature08308 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:nature:v:460:y:2009:i:7259:d:10.1038_nature08308

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

DOI: 10.1038/nature08308

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

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