Anomalous finite size effects on surface states in the topological insulator
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- 2 November 2009
- journal article
- Published by American Physical Society (APS) in Physical Review B
- Vol. 80 (20)
- https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevb.80.205401
Abstract
We study how the surface states in the strong topological insulator Bi$_2$Se$_3$ are influenced by finite size effects, and compare our results with those recently obtained for 2D topological insulator HgTe. We demonstrate two important distinctions: \textit{(i)} contrary to HgTe, the surface-states in Bi$_2$Se$_3$ display a remarkable robustness towards decreasing the width $L$ down to a few nm, thus ensuring that the topological surface states remain intact, and \textit{(ii)} the gapping due to the hybridization of the surface states features an oscillating exponential decay as a function of $L$ in Bi$_2$Se$_3$ in sharp contrast to HgTe. Our findings suggest that Bi$_2$Se$_3$ is suitable for nanoscale applications in quantum computing or spintronics. Also, we propose a way to experimentally detect both of the predicted effects.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures. References added. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.
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