A single two-dimensinoal Dirac fermion state has been recently observed on the surface of topological insulator Bi2Te3 by angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES). We study the surface band structure using k⋅p theory and find an unconventional hexagonal warping term, which is the counterpart of cubic Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling in rhombohedral structures. We show that this hexagonal warping term naturally explains the observed hexagonal snow-flake Fermi surface. The strength of hexagonal warping is characterized by a single parameter, which is extracted from the size of the Fermi surface. We predict a number of testable signatures of hexagonal warping in spectroscopy experiments on Bi2Te3. We also explore the possibility of a spin-density wave due to strong nesting of the Fermi surface.
@article{arxiv.0908.1418,
title = {Hexagonal Warping Effects in the Surface States of Topological Insulator Bi$_2$Te$_3$},
author = {Liang Fu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0908.1418},
year = {2013}
}