Anthony Richardella

Topological Surface States Protected from Backscattering by Chiral Spin Texture

Topological insulators are a new class of insulators in which a bulk gap for electronic excitations is generated because of the strong spin–orbit coupling inherent to these systems. These materials are distinguished from ordinary insulators by the presence of gapless metallic surface states, resembling chiral edge modes in quantum Hall systems, but with unconventional spin textures. A key predicted feature of such spin-textured boundary states is their insensitivity to spin-independent scattering, which is thought to protect them from backscattering and localization. Recently, experimental and theoretical efforts have provided strong evidence for the existence of both two- and three-dimensional classes of such topological insulator materials in semiconductor quantum well structures and several bismuth-based compounds, but so far experiments have not probed the sensitivity of these chiral states to scattering. Here we use scanning tunnelling spectroscopy and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy to visualize the gapless surface states in the three-dimensional topological insulator Bi1-xSbx, and examine in detail the influence of scattering from disorder caused by random alloying in this compound. We show that, despite strong atomic scale disorder, backscattering between states of opposite momentum and opposite spin is absent. Our observations demonstrate that the chiral nature of these states protects the spin of the carriers. These chiral states are therefore potentially useful for spin-based electronics, in which long spin coherence is critical, and also for quantum computing applications, where topological protection can enable fault-tolerant information processing.

Spin-transfer torque generated by a topological insulator

Magnetic devices are a leading contender for the implementation of memory and logic technologies that are non-volatile, that can scale to high density and high speed, and that do not wear out. However, widespread application of magnetic memory and logic devices will require the development of efficient mechanisms for reorienting their magnetization using the least possible current and power. There has been considerable recent progress in this effort; in particular, it has been discovered that spin–orbit interactions in heavy-metal/ferromagnet bilayers can produce strong current-driven torques on the magnetic layer, via the spin Hall effect in the heavy metal or the Rashba–Edelstein effect in the ferromagnet. In the search for materials to provide even more efficient spin–orbit-induced torques, some proposals have suggested topological insulators, which possess a surface state in which the effects of spin–orbit coupling are maximal in the sense that an electron’s spin orientation is fixed relative to its propagation direction. Here we report experiments showing that charge current flowing in-plane in a thin film of the topological insulator bismuth selenide (Bi2Se3) at room temperature can indeed exert a strong spin-transfer torque on an adjacent ferromagnetic permalloy (Ni81Fe19) thin film, with a direction consistent with that expected from the topological surface state. We find that the strength of the torque per unit charge current density in Bi2Se3 is greater than for any source of spin-transfer torque measured so far, even for non-ideal topological insulator films in which the surface states coexist with bulk conduction. Our data suggest that topological insulators could enable very efficient electrical manipulation of magnetic materials at room temperature, for memory and logic applications.

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The growth and elementary properties of

Atom-by-atom substitution of Mn in GaAs and visualization of their hole-mediated interactions

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Visualizing Critical Correlations Near the Metal-Insulator Transition in Ga1-xMnxAs

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Coherent heteroepitaxy of Bi2Se3 on GaAs (111)B

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Observation of quantum-tunnelling-modulated spin texture in ultrathin topological insulator Bi2Se3 films

single crystals are reported. Based on a hypothesis about the defect chemistry of

Giant anisotropic magnetoresistance in a quantum anomalous Hall insulator

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Momentum-space imaging of Cooper pairing in a half-Dirac-gas topological superconductor

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Growth and characterization of hybrid insulating ferromagnet-topological insulator heterostructure devices

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