Hou-Jian Duan

Electronic structure and optic absorption of phosphorene under strain

Abstract We studied the electronic structure and optic absorption of phosphorene (monolayer of black phosphorus) under strain. Strain was found to be a powerful tool for the band structure engineering. The in-plane strain in armchair or zigzag direction changes the effective mass components along both directions, while the vertical strain only has significant effect on the effective mass in the armchair direction. The band gap is narrowed by compressive in-plane strain and tensile vertical strain. Under certain strain configurations, the gap is closed and the energy band evolves to the semi-Dirac type: the dispersion is linear in the armchair direction and is gapless quadratic in the zigzag direction. The band-edge optic absorption is completely polarized along the armchair direction, and the polarization rate is reduced when the photon energy increases. Strain not only changes the absorption edge (the smallest photon energy for electron transition), but also the absorption polarization.

Resonance states and beating pattern induced by quantum impurity scattering in Weyl/Dirac semimetals

Currently, Weyl semimetals (WSMs) are drawing great interest as a new topological nontrivial phase. When most of the studies concentrated on the clean host WSMs, it is expected that the dirty WSM system would present rich physics due to the interplay between the WSM states and the impurities embedded inside these materials. We investigate theoretically the change of local density of states in three-dimensional Dirac and Weyl bulk states scattered off a quantum impurity. It is found that the quantum impurity scattering can create nodal resonance and Kondo peak/dip in the host bulk states, remarkably modifying the pristine spectrum structure. Moreover, the joint effect of the separation of Weyl nodes and the Friedel interference oscillation causes the unique battering feature. We in detail an- alyze the different contribution from the intra- and inter-node scattering processes and present various scenarios as a consequence of competition between them. Importantly, these behaviors are sensitive significantly to the displacement of Weyl nodes in energy or momentum, from which the distinctive fingerprints can be extracted to identify various semimetal materials experimentally by employing the scanning tunneling microscope.

Effect of impurity resonant states on optical and thermoelectric properties on the surface of a topological insulator

We investigate the thermoelectric effect on a topological insulator surface with particular interest in impurity-induced resonant states. To clarify the role of the resonant states, we calculate the dc and ac conductivities and the thermoelectric coefficients along the longitudinal direction within the full Born approximation. It is found that at low temperatures, the impurity resonant state with strong energy de-pendence can lead to a zero-energy peak in the dc conductivity, whose height is sensitively dependent on the strength of scattering potential, and even can reverse the sign of the thermopower, implying the switching from n- to p-type carriers. Also, we exhibit the thermoelectric signatures for the filling process of a magnetic band gap by the resonant state. We further study the impurity effect on the dynamic optical conductivity, and find that the resonant state also generates an optical conductivity peak at the absorption edge for the interband transition. These results provide new perspectives for understanding the doping effect on topological insulator materials.

Phase transition for edge band emergence induced by the edge relaxation of phosphorene ribbons

We investigate the edge bands of the relaxed phosphorene edges. The edge relaxation is modeled by letting the outmost bonds be different. By treating the relaxed hopping energy as a parameter, we observe the phase transition for the edge band appearance in the bulk gap. The analytical expression of the relaxed hopping for the phase transition is obtained by means of tight-binding parameters.

Bulk RKKY signatures of topological phase transition in silicene

Silicene offers an ideal platform for exploring the phase transition due to strong spin-orbit interaction and its unique structure with strong tunability. With applied electric field and circularly polarized light, silicone is predicted to exhibit rich phases. We propose that these intricate phase transitions can be detected by measuring the bulk Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida (RKKY) interaction. We have in detail analyzed the dependence of RKKY interaction on phase parameters for different impurity configurations along zigzag direction. Importantly, we present an interesting comparison between different terms of RKKY interaction with phase diagram. It is found that the in-plane and out-of-plane terms can exhibit the local extreme value or change of sign at the phase critical point and remarkable difference in magnitude for different phase regions. Consequently, the magnetic measurement provides unambiguous signatures to identify various types of phase transition simultaneously, which can be carried out with present technique.

The tunable electronic structure and optic absorption properties of phosphorene by a normally applied electric field

We studied the electronic structure and optical absorption properties of phosphorene (a monolayer black phosphorus) under a normally applied electric field. The electric field enlarges the energy gap, weakens the effective mass anisotropy, and increases the effective mass component along the armchair direction (x-direction) for both conduction and valence bands but provides little change to the component along the zigzag direction (y-direction). The band edge optical absorption is completely polarized in the x-direction, and decreases when increasing the electric field. If the exciting frequency is beyond the energy gap, the absorption for the y-polarized light becomes nonzero, but the absorption is still highly polarized.

Decay and the double-decay properties of edge bands of phosphorene ribbons

Phosphorene (a monolayer of black phosphorus) recently spurred much attention due to its potential for application. We notice there are two types of zigzag edge and two types of armchair edge for phosphorene lattice. We study the winding number of various types of edge of phosphorene ribbons and conclude that, besides on the typical zigzag edge, the flat zero-energy edge band can be found in the ribbon of another nontypical armchair edge. The localization of these edge bands is investigated analytically. We find every single edge state of the atypical armchair edge decays to the bulk at two different decay rates.