Transport in selectively magnetically doped topological insulator wires

We study the electronic and transport properties of a topological insulator nanowire including selective magnetic doping of its surfaces. We use a model which is appropriate to describe materials like Bi2Se3 within a k · p approximation and consider nanowires with a rectangular geometry.Within this...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Acero, Sergio, Brey, Luis, Herrera, William J., Levy-Yeyati Mizrahi, Alfredo
Format: article
Publication Date:2015
Country:España
Institution:Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Repository:Biblos-e Archivo. Repositorio Institucional de la UAM
Language:English
OAI Identifier:oai:repositorio.uam.es:10486/672808
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10486/672808
https://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.92.235445
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:Electronic and transport properties
Magnetic
Green’s functions
Wire
Nanowire cross section
Física
Description
Summary:We study the electronic and transport properties of a topological insulator nanowire including selective magnetic doping of its surfaces. We use a model which is appropriate to describe materials like Bi2Se3 within a k · p approximation and consider nanowires with a rectangular geometry.Within this model the magnetic doping at the (111) surfaces induces a Zeeman field which opens a gap at the Dirac cones corresponding to the surface states. For obtaining the transport properties in a two terminal configuration we use a recursive Green’s function method based on a tight-binding model which is obtained by discretizing the original continuous model. For the case of uniform magnetization of two opposite nanowire (111) surfaces we show that the conductance can switch from a quantized value of e2/h (when the magnetizations are equal) to a very small value (when they are opposite).We also analyze the case of nonuniform magnetizations in which the Zeeman field on the two opposite surfaces change sign at themiddle of the wire. For this case we find that conduction by resonant tunneling through a chiral state bound at the middle of the wire is possible. The resonant level position can be tuned by imposing an Aharonov-Bohm flux through the nanowire cross section