Magnetic topological insulator MnBi6Te10 with zero-field ferromagnetic state and gapped Dirac surface states

TL;DR

This paper reports that MnBi6Te10 is a magnetic topological insulator exhibiting zero-field ferromagnetism and gapped Dirac surface states, making it promising for high-temperature topological quantum phenomena.

Contribution

It demonstrates that MnBi6Te10 hosts a ferromagnetic axion insulator state with nontrivial topology and zero-field ferromagnetism, a novel combination for topological materials.

Findings

MnBi6Te10 exhibits antiferromagnetic order below 10.8 K.

Ferromagnetic state appears with low-field polarization and persists at zero field.

Dirac surface states with a ~28 meV gap are observed on different surface terminations.

Abstract

Magnetic topological insulators (TIs) with nontrivial topological electronic structure and broken time-reversal symmetry exhibit various exotic topological quantum phenomena. The realization of such exotic phenomena at high temperature is one of central topics in this area. We reveal that MnBi6Te10 is a magnetic TI with an antiferromagnetic ground state below 10.8 K whose nontrivial topology is manifested by Dirac-like surface states. The ferromagnetic axion insulator state with Z4 = 2 emerges once spins polarized at field as low as 0.1 T, accompanied with saturated anomalous Hall resistivity up to 10 K. Such a ferromagnetic state is preserved even external field down to zero at 2 K. Theoretical calculations indicate that the few-layer ferromagnetic MnBi6Te10 is also topologically nontrivial with a non-zero Chern number. Angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy experiments further reveal three types of Dirac surface states arising from different terminations on the cleavage surfaces, one of which has insulating behavior with an energy gap of ~ 28 meV at the Dirac point. These outstanding features suggest that MnBi6Te10 is a promising system to realize various topological quantum effects at zero field and high temperature.