Model Hamiltonian for topological Kondo insulator SmB6

TL;DR

This paper derives effective Hamiltonians for SmB6, a topological Kondo insulator, enabling detailed predictions of its low-energy band structure and surface state properties for experimental verification.

Contribution

It introduces a systematic method combining kp and first-principles calculations to derive accurate low-energy Hamiltonians for SmB6, advancing understanding of its topological surface states.

Findings

Effective Hamiltonians accurately reproduce the low-energy band structure.

Predicted spin textures of surface states guide experimental detection.

Provides a foundation for studying topological properties of Kondo insulators.

Abstract

Starting from the kp method in combination with first-principles calculations, we systematically derive the effective Hamiltonians that capture the low energy band structures of recently discovered topological Kondo insulator SmB6. Using these effective Hamiltonians we can obtain both the energy dispersion and the spin texture of the topological surface states, which can be detected by further experiments.