3,114 research outputs found
Dynamics of a Rydberg hydrogen atom near a topologically insulating surface
We investigate the classical dynamics of a Rydberg hydrogen atom near the
surface of a planar topological insulator. The system is described by a
Hamiltonian consisting of the free-hydrogen part and the hydrogen-surface
potential. The latter includes the interactions between the electron and both
image electric charges and image magnetic monopoles. Owing to the axial
symmetry, the component of angular momentum is conserved. Here we
consider the case. The structure of the phase space is explored
extensively by means of numerical techniques and Poincar\'{e} surfaces of
section for the recently discovered topological insulator TlBiSe. The
phase space of the system is separated into regions of vibrational and
rotational motion. We show that vibrational-rotational-vibrational type
transitions can be tuned with the topological magnetoelectric polarizability.Comment: Accepted for publication in Europhysics Letter
Exact solution of the Schr\"{o}dinger equation for an hydrogen atom at the interface between the vacuum and a topologically insulating surface
When an hydrogen atom is brought near to the interface between
-media, the quantum-mechanical motion of the electron will be affected
by the electromagnetic interaction between the atomic charges and the
-interface, which is described by an axionic extension of Maxwell
electrodynamics in the presence of a boundary. In this paper we investigate the
atom-surface interaction effects upon the energy levels and wave functions of
an hydrogen atom placed at the interface between a -medium and the
vacuum. In the approximation considered, the Schr\"{o}dinger equation can be
exactly solved by separation of variables in terms of hypergeometic functions
for the angular part and hydrogenic functions for the radial part. In order to
make such effects apparent we deal with unrealistic high values of the
-parameter. We also compute the energy shifts using perturbation theory
for a particular small value of and we demonstrate that they are in a
very good agreement with the ones obtained from the exact solution.Comment: 20 pages, 17 figures, 6 tables, Accepted for publication in the
European Physics Journal
Green's function approach to Chern-Simons extended electrodynamics: an effective theory describing topological insulators
Boundary effects produced by a Chern-Simons (CS) extension to electrodynamics
are analyzed exploiting the Green's function (GF) method. We consider the
electromagnetic field coupled to a -term in a way that has been
proposed to provide the correct low energy effective action for topological
insulators (TI). We take the -term to be piecewise constant in
different regions of space separated by a common interface , to be
called the -boundary. Features arising due to the presence of the
boundary, such as magnetoelectric effects, are already known in CS extended
electrodynamics and solutions for some experimental setups have been found with
specific configuration of sources. In this work we illustrate a method to
construct the GF that allows to solve the CS modified field equations for a
given -boundary with otherwise arbitrary configuration of sources. The
method is illustrated by solving the case of a planar -boundary but can
also be applied for cylindrical and spherical geometries for which the
-boundary can be characterized by a surface where a given coordinate
remains constant. The static fields of a point-like charge interacting with a
planar TI, as described by a planar discontinuity in , are calculated
and successfully compared with previously reported results. We also compute the
force between the charge and the -boundary by two different methods,
using the energy momentum tensor approach and the interaction energy calculated
via the GF. The infinitely straight current-carrying wire is also analyzed
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