We show that gated bilayer graphene hosts a strong topological insulator (TI) phase in the presence of Rashba spin-orbit (SO) coupling. We find that gated bilayer graphene under preserved time-reversal symmetry is a quantum valley Hall insulator for small Rashba SO coupling λR, and transitions to a strong TI when λR>U2+t⊥2, where U and t⊥ are respectively the interlayer potential and tunneling energy. Different from a conventional quantum spin Hall state, the edge modes of our strong TI phase exhibit both spin and valley filtering, and thus share the properties of both quantum spin Hall and quantum valley Hall insulators. The strong TI phase remains robust in the presence of weak graphene intrinsic SO coupling.
@article{arxiv.1109.1131,
title = {Two-Dimensional Topological Insulator State and Topological Phase Transition in Bilayer Graphene},
author = {Zhenhua Qiao and Wang-Kong Tse and Hua Jiang and Yugui Yao and Qian Niu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1109.1131},
year = {2011}
}