Dichotomy of saddle points in energy bands of a monolayer NbSe$_2$

TL;DR

This paper theoretically investigates the unique spin textures at saddle points in monolayer NbSe₂, revealing their impact on spin Hall conductivity and how gate potentials can control these features for studying collective phenomena.

Contribution

It introduces a minimal tight-binding model capturing the distinct spin textures at saddle points in monolayer NbSe₂ and demonstrates their tunability via gate potentials.

Findings

Logarithmic divergence of density of states at saddle points.

Distinct spin textures: windmill-shaped and unidirectional.

Significant intrinsic spin Hall conductivity from these states.

Abstract

We theoretically show that two distinctive spin textures manifest themselves around saddle points of energy bands in a monolayer NbSe$_2$ under external gate potentials. While the density of states at all saddle points diverge logarithmically, ones at the zone boundaries display a windmill-shaped spin texture while the others unidirectional spin orientations. The disparate spin-resolved states are demonstrated to contribute an intrinsic spin Hall conductivity significantly while their characteristics differ from each other.Based on a minimal but essential tight-binding approximation reproducing first-principles computation results, we established distinct effective Rashba Hamiltonians for each saddle point, realizing the unique spin textures depending on their momentum. Energetic positions of the saddle points in a single layer NbSe$_2$ are shown to be well controlled by a gate potential so that it could be a prototypical system to test a competition between various collective phenomena triggered by diverging density of states and their spin textures in low-dimension.