Weak topological insulators in PbTe/SnTe superlattices
Name
Yang-2014-Weak topolgical insulators.pdf
Size
639.76 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
7fdf0c080cf96dd59e312de3ac72a4b9
Author(s)
Yang, Gang
Liu, Junwei
Fu, Liang
Duan, Wenhui
Liu, Chaoxing
Date Issued
February 2014
Journal
Physical Review B
Publisher
American Physical Society
Citation
Yang, Gang, Junwei Liu, Liang Fu, Wenhui Duan, and Chaoxing Liu. “Weak Topological Insulators in PbTe/SnTe Superlattices.” Phys. Rev. B 89, no. 8 (February 2014). © 2014 American Physical Society
Version
Final published version
Abstract
It is desirable to realize topological phases in artificial structures by engineering electronic band structures. In this paper we investigate (PbTe)[subscript m](SnTe)[subscript 2n−m] superlattices along the [001] direction and find a robust weak topological insulator phase for a large variety of layer numbers m and 2n − m. We confirm this topologically nontrivial phase by calculating Z[subscript 2] topological invariants and topological surface states based on the first-principles calculations. We show that the folding of Brillouin zone due to the superlattice structure plays an essential role in inducing topologically nontrivial phases in this system. This mechanism can be generalized to other systems in which band inversion occurs at multiple momenta, and gives us a brand new way to engineer topological materials in artificial structures.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.89.085312
