Weak Localization and Antilocalization in Topological Materials with Impurity Spin-Orbit Interactions

TL;DR

This paper investigates how intrinsic and extrinsic spin-orbit interactions influence weak localization and antilocalization phenomena in topological insulators and Weyl semimetals, revealing new effects on magnetoconductivity and phase transitions.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of the combined effects of intrinsic and extrinsic spin-orbit interactions on quantum interference in topological materials, including a phase diagram for localization transitions.

Findings

Extrinsic spin-orbit scattering affects relaxation times and diffusion constants.

Topological insulators always show weak antilocalization regardless of extrinsic effects.

A phase diagram for localization transition as a function of mass and spin-orbit strength.

Abstract

Topological materials have attracted considerable experimental and theoretical attention. They exhibit strong spin-orbit coupling both in the band structure (intrinsic) and in the impurity potentials (extrinsic), although the latter is often neglected. Here we discuss weak localization and antilocalization of massless Dirac fermions in topological insulators and massive Dirac fermions in Weyl semimetal thin films taking into account both intrinsic and extrinsic spin-orbit interactions. The physics is governed by the complex interplay of the chiral spin texture, quasiparticle mass, and scalar and spin-orbit scattering. We demonstrate that terms linear in the extrinsic spin-orbit scattering are generally present in the Bloch and momentum relaxation times in all topological materials, and the correction to the diffusion constant is linear in the strength of the extrinsic spin-orbit. In TIs, which have zero quasiparticle mass, the terms linear in the impurity spin-orbit coupling lead to an observable density dependence in the weak antilocalization correction. They produce substantial qualitative modifications to the magnetoconductivity, differing greatly from the conventional HLN formula traditionally used in experimental fits, which predicts a crossover from weak localization to antilocalization as a function of the extrinsic spin-orbit strength. In contrast, our analysis reveals that topological insulators always exhibit weak antilocalization. In WSM thin films having intermediate to large values of the quasiparticle mass extrinsic spin-orbit scattering strongly affects the boundary of the weak localization to antilocalization transition. We produce a complete phase diagram for this transition as a function of the mass and spin-orbit scattering strength. We discuss implications for experiments and provide a brief comparison with transition metal dichalcogenides.