12,574 research outputs found
Tuning the conductance of Dirac fermions on the surface of a topological insulator
We study the transport properties of the Dirac fermions with Fermi velocity
on the surface of a topological insulator across a ferromagnetic strip
providing an exchange field over a region of width . We show
that the conductance of such a junction changes from oscillatory to a
monotonically decreasing function of beyond a critical . This
leads to the possible realization of a magnetic switch using these junctions.
We also study the conductance of these Dirac fermions across a potential
barrier of width and potential in the presence of such a
ferromagnetic strip and show that beyond a critical , the
criteria of conductance maxima changes from
to for integer . We point out that these novel phenomena
have no analogs in graphene and suggest experiments which can probe them.Comment: v1 4 pages 5 fig
Magnetotransport of Dirac Fermions on the surface of a topological insulator
We study the properties of Dirac fermions on the surface of a topological
insulator in the presence of crossed electric and magnetic fields. We provide
an exact solution to this problem and demonstrate that, in contrast to their
counterparts in graphene, these Dirac fermions allow relative tuning of the
orbital and Zeeman effects of an applied magnetic field by a crossed electric
field along the surface. We also elaborate and extend our earlier results on
normal metal-magnetic film-normal metal (NMN) and normal metal-barrier-magnetic
film (NBM) junctions of topological insulators [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 104},
046403 (2010)]. For NMN junctions, we show that for Dirac fermions with Fermi
velocity , the transport can be controlled using the exchange field
of a ferromagnetic film over a region of width . The
conductance of such a junction changes from oscillatory to a monotonically
decreasing function of beyond a critical which leads to the
possible realization of magnetic switches using these junctions. For NBM
junctions with a potential barrier of width and potential , we find
that beyond a critical , the criteria of conductance maxima
changes from to for
integer . Finally, we compute the subgap tunneling conductance of a normal
metal-magnetic film-superconductor (NMS) junctions on the surface of a
topological insulator and show that the position of the peaks of the zero-bias
tunneling conductance can be tuned using the magnetization of the ferromagnetic
film. We point out that these phenomena have no analogs in either conventional
two-dimensional materials or Dirac electrons in graphene and suggest
experiments to test our theory.Comment: 11 pages, 12 figures; v
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