The momentum and photon energy dependence of the circular dichroic photoemission in the bulk Rashba semiconductors BiTeX (X = I, Br, Cl)

TL;DR

This study investigates how the circular dichroic photoemission signals in bulk Rashba semiconductors BiTeX vary with photon energy and momentum, revealing complex dependencies linked to phase differences in the electronic wave-functions.

Contribution

It provides a detailed photon energy and momentum dependent analysis of cd-ARPES in BiTeX compounds, highlighting the phase-related origins of dichroism variations.

Findings

Dichroic signals vary significantly with photon energy and momentum.

Different compounds and spin-split states show distinct dichroism modulations.

Phase differences in wave-functions influence the dichroism, indicating interference effects.

Abstract

Bulk Rashba systems BiTeX (X = I, Br, Cl) are emerging as important candidates for developing spintronics devices, because of the coexistence of spin-split bulk and surface states, along with the ambipolar character of the surface charge carriers. The need of studying the spin texture of strongly spin-orbit coupled materials has recently promoted circular dichroic Angular Resolved Photoelectron Spectroscopy (cd-ARPES) as an indirect tool to measure the spin and the angular degrees of freedom. Here we report a detailed photon energy dependent study of the cd-ARPES spectra in BiTeX (X = I, Br and Cl). Our work reveals a large variation of the magnitude and sign of the dichroism. Interestingly, we find that the dichroic signal modulates differently for the three compounds and for the different spin-split states. These findings show a momentum and photon energy dependence for the cd-ARPES signals in the bulk Rashba semiconductor BiTeX (X = I, Br, Cl). Finally, the outcome of our experiment indicates the important relation between the modulation of the dichroism and the phase differences between the wave-functions involved in the photoemission process. This phase difference can be due to initial or final state effects. In the former case the phase difference results in possible interference effects among the photo-electrons emitted from different atomic layers and characterized by entangled spin-orbital polarized bands. In the latter case the phase difference results from the relative phases of the expansion of the final state in different outgoing partial waves.