We explore electrical transport through a point contact in strained HgTe, a three-dimensional topological insulator. In the absence of a magnetic field B, there is no quantization. However, under higher magnetic fields, we observe distinct non-integer conductance steps. Based on numerical tight-binding calculations and a phenomenological Landauer-B\"uttiker approach, we attribute these atypical, non-integer quantized plateaus to significant scattering effects at the point contact.
@article{arxiv.2410.17786,
title = {Anomalous conductance steps in three-dimensional topological insulator HgTe-based quantum point contacts},
author = {Elisabeth Richter and Michael Barth and Dmitriy A. Kozlov and Angelika Knothe and Nikolay N. Mikhailov and Juliane Steidl and Cosimo Gorini and Stefan Hartl and Wolfgang Himmler and Klaus Richter and Dieter Weiss},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2410.17786},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
Submitted to PRR on 10/21/2024, re-submitted with minor changes to PRR on 01/14/2025. Accepted on 02/04/2025 and published in PRR on 03/11/2025. 8 pages, 7 figures