Electric control of inverted gap and hybridization gap in type II InAs/GaSb quantum wells

TL;DR

This study investigates how external electric fields influence the inverted and hybridization gaps in InAs/GaSb quantum wells, revealing regimes where these gaps increase or decrease, and highlighting the role of light-hole bands and Rashba splitting.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of electric field effects on hybridization gaps using an eight-band Kane model, explaining experimental observations and identifying key band interactions.

Findings

Hybridization gap can decrease even as inverted gap increases under certain electric fields.

Light-hole bands significantly influence hybridization gap behavior.

Large electric fields induce strong Rashba splitting affecting the hybridization gap.

Abstract

The quantum spin Hall effect has been predicted theoretically and observed experimentally in InAs/GaSb quantum wells as a result of inverted band structures, for which electron bands in InAs layers are below heavy hole bands in GaSb layers in energy. The hybridization between electron bands and heavy hole bands leads to a hybridization gap away from k=0. A recent puzzling observation in experiments is that when the system is tuned to more inverted regime by a gate voltage (a larger inverted gap at k=0), the hybridization gap decreases. Motivated by this experiment, we explore the dependence of hybridization gap as a function of external electric fields based on the eight-band Kane model. We identify two regimes when varying electric fields: (1) both inverted and hybridization gaps increase and (2) inverted gap increases while hybridization gap decreases. Based on the effective model, we find that light-hole bands in GaSb layers play an important role in determining hybridization gap. In addition, a large external electric field can induce a strong Rashba splitting and also influence hybridization gap.