Dynamical gap generation in topological insulators

Paolo Cea ()
Additional contact information
Paolo Cea: Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Bari

The European Physical Journal B: Condensed Matter and Complex Systems, 2016, vol. 89, issue 4, 1-14

Abstract: Abstract We developed a quantum field theoretical description for the surface states of three-dimensional topological insulators. Within the relativistic quantum field theory formulation, we investigated the dynamics of low-lying surface states in an applied transverse magnetic field. We argued that, by taking into account quantum fluctuations, in three-dimensional topological insulators there is dynamical generation of a gap by a rearrangement of the Dirac sea. By comparing with available experimental data we found that our theoretical results allowed a consistent and coherent description of the Landau level spectrum of the surface low-lying excitations. Finally, we showed that the recently detected zero-Hall plateau at the charge neutral point could be accounted for by chiral edge states residing at the magnetic domain boundaries between the top and bottom surfaces of the three-dimensional topological insulator.

Keywords: Solid; State; and; Materials (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1140/epjb/e2016-70051-5 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:spr:eurphb:v:89:y:2016:i:4:d:10.1140_epjb_e2016-70051-5

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10051

DOI: 10.1140/epjb/e2016-70051-5

Access Statistics for this article

The European Physical Journal B: Condensed Matter and Complex Systems is currently edited by P. Hänggi and Angel Rubio

More articles in The European Physical Journal B: Condensed Matter and Complex Systems from Springer, EDP Sciences
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().