Trajectory of Anomalous Hall Effect toward the Quantized State in a Ferromagnetic Topological Insulator

TL;DR

This paper experimentally investigates the quantum anomalous Hall (QAH) effect in ferromagnetic topological insulators, revealing its relation to the quantum Hall effect and demonstrating quantum criticality and delocalization behavior.

Contribution

It provides the first experimental mapping of the QAH state in parameter space, linking it to the global phase diagram of the quantum Hall effect and identifying quantum critical behavior.

Findings

QAH state aligns with the quantum Hall phase diagram

Evidence of quantum criticality near the QAH transition

Behavior consistent with renormalization group predictions

Abstract

Topological insulators are bulk electronic insulators which possess symmetry protected gapless modes on their surfaces. Breaking the symmetries that underlie the gapless nature of the surface modes is predicted to give rise to exotic new states of matter. In particular, it has recently been predicted and shown that breaking of time reversal symmetry in the form of ferromagnetism can give rise to a gapped state characterized by a zero magnetic field quantized Hall response and dissipationless longitudinal transport known as the Quantum Anomalous Hall (QAH) state. A key question that has thus far remained experimentally unexplored is the relationship of this new type of quantum Hall state with the previously known orbitally driven quantum Hall states. Here, we show experimentally that a ferromagnetic topological insulator exhibiting the QAH state is well described by the global phase diagram of the quantum Hall effect. By mapping the behavior of the conductivity tensor in the parameter space of temperature, magnetic field, and chemical potential in the vicinity of the QAH phase, we find evidence for quantum criticality and delocalization behavior that can quantitatively be described by the renormalization group properties of the quantum Hall ground state. This result demonstrates that the QAH state observed in ferromagnetic topological insulators can be understood within the context of the law of corresponding states which governs the quantum Hall state. This suggests a roadmap for studying the QAH effect including transitions to possible adjacent topologically non-trivial states and a possible universality class for the QAH transition.