English

Localized surfaces of three dimensional topological insulators

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2019-04-17 v2 Disordered Systems and Neural Networks Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics

Abstract

We study the surface of a three-dimensional spin chiral Z2\mathrm{Z}_2 topological insulator (class CII), demonstrating the possibility of its localization. This arises through an interplay of interaction and statistically-symmetric disorder, that confines the gapless fermionic degrees of freedom to a network of one-dimensional helical domain-walls that can be localized. We identify two distinct regimes of this gapless insulating phase, a `clogged' regime wherein the network localization is induced by its junctions between otherwise metallic helical domain-walls, and a `fully localized' regime of localized domain-walls. The experimental signatures of these regimes are also discussed.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1901.05464,
  title  = {Localized surfaces of three dimensional topological insulators},
  author = {Yang-Zhi Chou and Rahul M. Nandkishore and Leo Radzihovsky},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1901.05464},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

7+6 pages, 4 figures, published version

R2 v1 2026-06-23T07:13:48.801Z