Hedgehog Spin-texture and Berry's Phase tuning in a Magnetic Topological Insulator
Abstract
Understanding and control of spin degrees of freedom on the surfaces of topological materials are key to future applications as well as for realizing novel physics such as the axion electrodynamics associated with time-reversal (TR) symmetry breaking on the surface. We experimentally demonstrate magnetically induced spin reorientation phenomena simultaneous with a Dirac-metal to gapped-insulator transition on the surfaces of manganese-doped Bi2Se3 thin films. The resulting electronic groundstate exhibits unique hedgehog-like spin textures at low energies, which directly demonstrate the mechanics of TR symmetry breaking on the surface. We further show that an insulating gap induced by quantum tunnelling between surfaces exhibits spin texture modulation at low energies but respects TR invariance. These spin phenomena and the control of their Fermi surface geometrical phase first demonstrated in our experiments pave the way for the future realization of many predicted exotic magnetic phenomena of topological origin.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1212.3382,
title = {Hedgehog Spin-texture and Berry's Phase tuning in a Magnetic Topological Insulator},
author = {Su-Yang Xu and Madhab Neupane and Chang Liu and Duming Zhang and Anthony Richardella and L. Andrew Wray and Nasser Alidoust and Mats Leandersson and Thiagarajan Balasubramanian and Jaime Sánchez-Barriga and Oliver Rader and Gabriel Landolt and Bartosz Slomski and Jan Hugo Dil and Jürg Osterwalder and Tay-Rong Chang and Horng-Tay Jeng and Hsin Lin and Arun Bansil and Nitin Samarth and M. Zahid Hasan},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1212.3382},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
38 pages, 18 Figures, Includes new text, additional datasets and interpretation beyond arXiv:1206.2090, for the final published version see Nature Physics (2012)