Charged impurity scattering in two-dimensional topological insulators with Mexican-hat dispersion

TL;DR

This paper investigates how charged impurity scattering affects electron transport in two-dimensional topological insulators with Mexican-hat dispersion, revealing unique effects due to their singular density of states and ring-shaped Fermi surface.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of impurity screening and mobility dependence in Mexican-hat dispersion materials, incorporating electron-electron interactions beyond the relaxation time approximation.

Findings

Screened Coulomb potential is significantly affected by the Mexican-hat features.

Mobility shows unique temperature and density dependence due to ring-shaped Fermi surface.

Electron-electron interactions play a crucial role in transport properties.

Abstract

Scattering by charged impurities is known to mainly determine transport properties of electrons in modern quantum materials, but it remains poorly studied for materials with Mexican hat dispersion. Due to such nontrivial features as a singular density of states and a ring-shaped Fermi surface, electron-electron interaction and electron transitions between different isoenergetic contours are of key importance in this materials. We show that these factors significantly affect both the spatial profile of the screened potential of Coulomb centers and the dependence of mobility on temperature and electron density. The screened potential is calculated within the random phase approximation. The transport properties are determined without using the usual relaxation time approximation, since the distribution function in energy space is a vector defined by a system of two equations.