Floquet engineering of Dirac cones on the surface of a topological insulator

[EN] We propose to Floquet engineer Dirac cones at the surface of a three-dimensional topological insulator. We show that a large tunability of the Fermi velocity can be achieved as a function of the polarization, direction, and amplitude of the driving field. Using this external control, the Dirac...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Díaz-Fernández, Alvaro, Díaz, E., Gómez-León, Álvaro, Platero, Gloria, Domínguez-Adame, F.
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2019
País:España
Institución:Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
Repositorio:DIGITAL.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC
OAI Identifier:oai:digital.csic.es:10261/216518
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10261/216518
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Topological insulators
Dirac cones
Descripción
Sumario:[EN] We propose to Floquet engineer Dirac cones at the surface of a three-dimensional topological insulator. We show that a large tunability of the Fermi velocity can be achieved as a function of the polarization, direction, and amplitude of the driving field. Using this external control, the Dirac cones in the quasienergy spectrum may become elliptic or massive, in accordance with experimental evidence. These results help us to understand the interplay of surface states and external ac driving fields in topological insulators. In our work we use the full Hamiltonian for the three-dimensional system instead of effective surface Hamiltonians, which are usually considered in the literature. Our findings show that the Dirac cones in the quasienergy spectrum remain robust even in the presence of bulk states, and therefore, they validate the usage of effective surface Hamiltonians to explore the properties of Floquet-driven topological boundaries. Furthermore, our model allows us to introduce out-of-plane field configurations which cannot be accounted for by effective surface Hamiltonians.