Unbalanced edge modes and topological phase transition in gated trilayer graphene
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics
2012-05-21 v2 Materials Science
Abstract
Gapless edge modes hosted by chirally-stacked trilayer graphene display unique features when a bulk gap is opened by applying an interlayer potential difference. We show that trilayer graphene with half-integer valley Hall conductivity leads to unbalanced edge modes at opposite zigzag boundaries, resulting in a natural valley current polarizer. This unusual characteristic is preserved in the presence of Rashba spin-orbit coupling that turns a gated trilayer graphene into a topological insulator with an odd number of helical edge mode pairs.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1203.4033,
title = {Unbalanced edge modes and topological phase transition in gated trilayer graphene},
author = {Xiao Li and Zhenhua Qiao and Jeil Jung and Qian Niu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1203.4033},
year = {2012}
}
Comments
5 pages, 4 figures