Our experimental studies of electron transport in wide (14 nm) HgTe quantum wells confirm the persistence of a two-dimensional topological insulator state reported previously for narrower wells, ...where it was justified theoretically. Comparison of local and nonlocal resistance measurements indicate edge state transport in the samples of about 1 mm size at temperatures below 1 K. Temperature dependence of the resistances suggests an insulating gap of the order of a few meV. In samples with sizes smaller than 10 μm a quasiballistic transport via the edge states is observed.
We measure the quantum capacitance and probe thus directly the electronic density of states of the high mobility, Dirac type two-dimensional electron system, which forms on the surface of strained ...HgTe. Here we show that observed magnetocapacitance oscillations probe-in contrast to magnetotransport-primarily the top surface. Capacitance measurements constitute thus a powerful tool to probe only one topological surface and to reconstruct its Landau level spectrum for different positions of the Fermi energy.
The terahertz response of a two-dimensional topological insulator in a HgTe quantum well to radiation with wavelengths of 118 and 184 μm is investigated. It is found that the photoconductivity is ...rather high (up to a few percent of dark conductivity) and is manifested in both the local and nonlocal responses of the system. This fact proves that the observed photoconductivity is caused by changes in the transport via edge current-carrying states. The sign and nonresonant character of the photoconductivity indicate that it is caused by the heating of electrons in the system. The analysis of experimental results makes it possible to suggest that this heating originates from the Drude absorption of terahertz radiation by metallic “droplets” appearing owing to fluctuations in the impurity potential and the gap and located in direct proximity to edge states.
Quantum wells formed by layers of HgTe between HgFormula: see textCdFormula: see textTe barriers lead to two-dimensional (2D) topological insulators, as predicted by the BHZ model. Here, we ...theoretically and experimentally investigate the characteristics of triple HgTe quantum wells. We describe such heterostructure with a three dimensional Formula: see text Kane model, and use its eigenstates to derive an effective 2D Hamiltonian for the system. From these we obtain a phase diagram as a function of the well and barrier widths and we identify the different topological phases composed by zero, one, two, and three sets of edge states hybridized along the quantum wells. The phase transitions are characterized by a change of the spin Chern numbers and their corresponding band inversions. Complementary, transport measurements are experimentally investigated on a sample close to the transition line between the phases with one and two sets of edges states. Accordingly, for this sample we predict a gapless spectrum with low energy bulk conduction subbands given by one parabolic and one Dirac subband, and with edge states immersed in the bulk valence subbands. Consequently, we show that under these conditions, local and non-local transport measurements are inconclusive to characterize a sole edge state conductivity due to bulk conductivity. On the other hand, Shubnikov-de Haas (SdH) oscillations show an excellent agreement with our theory. Particularly, we show that the measured SdH oscillation frequencies agrees with our model and show clear signatures of the coexistence of a parabolic and Dirac subbands.
Two-dimensional electron systems (2DES) subjected to a perpendicular magnetic field absorb electromagnetic radiation via cyclotron resonance (CR). Here we report a qualitative deviation from this ...well-known behavior. Our measurements in large-sized 2DES based on GaAs and HgTe reveal that the CR-enhanced photoconductivity becomes insensitive to the radiation helicity, showing almost the same signal amplitude for both CR active and inactive polarities of B, when the temperature T is lowered to that of liquid helium or below. Strikingly, the simultaneously measured CR in the transmission demonstrates a conventional strong helicity dependence for all T. In contrast similar photoconductivity measurements in graphene show no anomalies indicating an ordinary helicity-sensitivity in the whole investigated temperature range.
Nanowires with helical surface states represent key prerequisites for observing and exploiting phase-coherent topological conductance phenomena, such as spin-momentum locked quantum transport or ...topological superconductivity. We demonstrate in a joint experimental and theoretical study that gated nanowires fabricated from high-mobility strained HgTe, known as a bulk topological insulator, indeed preserve the topological nature of the surface states, that moreover extend phase-coherently across the entire wire geometry. The phase-coherence lengths are enhanced up to 5μm when tuning the wires into the bulk gap, so as to single out topological transport. The nanowires exhibit distinct conductance oscillations, both as a function of the flux due to an axial magnetic field and of a gate voltage. The observed h/e-periodic Aharonov-Bohm-type modulations indicate surface-mediated quasiballistic transport. Furthermore, an in-depth analysis of the scaling of the observed gate-dependent conductance oscillations reveals the topological nature of these surface states. To this end we combined numerical tight-binding calculations of the quantum magnetoconductance with simulations of the electrostatics, accounting for the gate-induced inhomogeneous charge carrier densities around the wires. We find that helical transport prevails even for strongly inhomogeneous gating and is governed by flux-sensitive high-angular momentum surface states that extend around the entire wire circumference.
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