Topological phases of topological insulator thin films

TL;DR

This paper investigates the topological phases of thin topological insulator films, revealing oscillating tunneling effects, phase transitions, and conditions for edge state observability, with implications for material design.

Contribution

It introduces a model for surface state coupling in thin films, showing how tunneling oscillates with thickness and momentum, and links the sign of the tunneling matrix to topological phases.

Findings

Tunneling matrix element oscillates with film thickness and momentum.

Sequence of topological and non-topological phase transitions occurs with varying thickness.

Edge states exist in the topological phase but only carry spin current if particle-hole symmetry is broken.

Abstract

We study the properties of a thin film of topological insulator material. We treat the coupling between helical states at opposite surfaces of the film in the properly-adapted tunneling approximation, and show that the tunneling matrix element oscillates as function of both the film thickness and the momentum in the plane of the film for Bi$_2$Se$_3$ and Bi$_2$Te$_3$. As a result, while the magnitude of the matrix element at the center of the surface Brillouin Zone gives the gap in the energy spectrum, the sign of the matrix element uniquely determines the topological properties of the film, as demonstrated by explicitly computing the pseudospin textures and the Chern number. We find a sequence of transitions between topological and non-topological phases, separated by semimetallic states, as the film thickness varies. In the topological phase the edge states of the film always exist but only carry a spin current if the edge potentials break particle-hole symmetry. The edge states decay very slowly away from the boundary in Bi$_2$Se$_3$, making Bi$_{2}$Te$_{3}$, where this scale is shorter, a more promising candidate for the observation of these states. Our results hold for free-standing films as well as heterostructures with large-gap insulators.