Angle-resolved and core-level photoemission study of interfacing the topological insulator Bi1.5Sb0.5Te1.7Se1.3 with Ag, Nb and Fe

Interfaces between a bulk-insulating topological insulator (TI) and metallic adatoms have been studied using high-resolution, angle-resolved and core-level photoemission. Fe, Nb and Ag were evaporated onto Bi1.5Sb0.5Te1.7Se1.3 (BSTS) surfaces both at room temperature and 38K. The coverage- and temperature-dependence of the adsorption and interfacial formation process have been investigated, highlighting the effects of the overlayer growth on the occupied electronic structure of the TI. For all coverages at room temperature and for those equivalent to less than 0.1 monolayer at low temperature all three metals lead to a downward shift of the TI's bands with respect to the Fermi level. At room temperature Ag appears to intercalate efficiently into the van der Waals gap of BSTS, accompanied by low-level substitution of the Te/Se atoms of the termination layer of the crystal. This Te/Se substitution with silver increases significantly for low temperature adsorption, and can even dominate the electrostatic environment of the Bi/Sb atoms in the BSTS near-surface region. On the other hand, Fe and Nb evaporants remain close to the termination layer of the crystal. On room temperature deposition, they initially substitute isoelectronically for Bi as a function of coverage, before substituting for Te/Se atoms. For low temperature deposition, Fe and Nb are too immobile for substitution processes and show a behaviour consistent with clustering on the surface. For both Ag and Fe/Nb, these differing adsorption pathways leads to the qualitatively similar and remarkable behavior for low temperature deposition that the chemical potential first moves upward (n-type dopant behavior) and then downward (p-type behavior) on increasing coverage.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures. In our Phys. Rev. B manuscript an error was made in formulating the last sentence of the abstract that, unfortunately, was missed in the page proofs. Version 2 on arxiv has the correct formulation of this sentenc

Tunable Fermi level and hedgehog spin texture in gapped graphene

Spin and pseudospin in graphene are known to interact under enhanced spin–orbit interaction giving rise to an in-plane Rashba spin texture. Here we show that Au-intercalated graphene on Fe(110) displays a large (∼230 meV) bandgap with out-of-plane hedgehog-type spin reorientation around the gapped Dirac point. We identify two causes responsible. First, a giant Rashba effect (∼70 meV splitting) away from the Dirac point and, second, the breaking of the six-fold graphene symmetry at the interface. This is demonstrated by a strong one-dimensional anisotropy of the graphene dispersion imposed by the two-fold-symmetric (110) substrate. Surprisingly, the graphene Fermi level is systematically tuned by the Au concentration and can be moved into the bandgap. We conclude that the out-of-plane spin texture is not only of fundamental interest but can be tuned at the Fermi level as a model for electrical gating of spin in a spintronic device

The Rashba Splitting in SmB6

The present article highlights two aspects at the intersection between Rashba physics and topological matter. Topologically nontrivial matter has been in the focus for almost two decades. It depends strongly on spin orbit coupling but, in contrast to large parts of modern solid state physics, strong electron correlation does not play a major role. In this context, SmB6 has been suggested as the first topological insulator driven by strong electron correlation and the first topological Kondo insulator. We review the important role of the Rashba splitting in determining that the observed surface states are not topological. Moreover, we point out that the Rashba splitting of SmB6 represents the extreme case of a large splitting in momentum space at a small Rashba paramete

Electronic structure and quantum criticality in Ba(Fe1−x−yCoxMny)2As2\mathrm{Ba(Fe_{1-x-y}Co_xMn_y)^2As_2}, an ARPES study

We used angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) and density functional theory calculations to study the electronic structure of $\text{Ba(Fe}_{1-x-y}\text{Co}_{x}\text{Mn}_{y})_{2}\text{As}_{2}$ for $x=0.06$ and $0\le y \le 0.07$ . From ARPES we derive that the substitution of Fe by Mn does not lead to hole doping, indicating a localization of the induced holes. An evaluation of the measured spectral function does not indicate a diverging effective mass or scattering rate near optimal doping. Thus, the present ARPES results indicate a continuous evolution of the quasiparticle interaction and therefore question previous quantum critical scenarios