Quantum oscillations and Berry's phase in topological insulator surface states with broken particle-hole symmetry

TL;DR

This paper develops a semi-classical theory to analyze quantum oscillations in topological insulator surface states with broken particle-hole symmetry, clarifying how to reliably extract Berry's phase despite complexities.

Contribution

It introduces a systematic fitting procedure for Landau level plots to accurately determine Berry's phase in mixed normal-Dirac systems with gaps.

Findings

Semi-classical theory for mixed normal-Dirac systems with gaps

Clarification of Berry's phase extraction in topological insulators

Proposed systematic fitting method for Landau level analysis

Abstract

Quantum oscillations can be used to determine properties of the Fermi surface of metals by varying the magnitude and orientation of an external magnetic field. Topological insulator surface states are an unusual mix of normal and Dirac fermions. Unlike in graphene and simple metals, Berry's geometric phase in topological insulator surface states is not necessarily quantised. We show that reliably extracting this geometric phase from the phase offset associated with the quantum oscillations is subtle. This is especially so in the presence of a Dirac gap such as that associated with the Zeeman splitting or interlayer tunneling. We develop a semi-classical theory for general mixed normal-Dirac systems in the presence of a gap, and in doing so clarify the role of topology and broken particle-hole symmetry. We propose a systematic procedure of fitting Landau level index plots at large filling factors to reliably extract the phase offset associated with Berry's phase.