2 research outputs found
Topological phase transitions between chiral and helical spin textures in a lattice with spin-orbit coupling and a magnetic field
We consider the combined effects of large spin-orbit couplings and a
perpendicular magnetic field in a 2D honeycomb fermionic lattice. This system
provides an elegant setup to generate versatile spin textures propagating along
the edge of a sample. The spin-orbit coupling is shown to induce topological
phase transitions between a helical quantum spin Hall phase and a chiral
spin-imbalanced quantum Hall state. Besides, we find that the spin orientation
of a single topological edge state can be tuned by a Rashba spin-orbit
coupling, opening an interesting route towards quantum spin manipulation. We
discuss the possible realization of our results using cold atoms trapped in
optical lattices, where large synthetic magnetic fields and spin-orbit
couplings can be engineered and finely tuned. In particular, this system would
lead to the observation of a time-reversal-symmetry-broken quantum spin Hall
phase.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, Accepted in Europhys. Lett. (Dec 2011