Observation of Zeeman effect in topological surface state with distinct material dependence

The helical Dirac fermions on the surface of topological insulators host novel relativistic quantum phenomena in solids. Manipulating spins of topological surface state (TSS) represents an essential step towards exploring the theoretically predicted exotic states related to time reversal symmetry (TRS) breaking via magnetism or magnetic field. Understanding Zeeman effect of TSS and determining its g-factor are pivotal for such manipulations in the latter form of TRS breaking. Here, we report those direct experimental observations in Bi2Se3 and Sb2Te2Se by spectroscopic imaging scanning tunneling microscopy. The Zeeman shifting of zero mode Landau level is identified unambiguously by judiciously excluding the extrinsic influences associated with the non-linearity in the TSS band dispersion and the spatially varying potential. The g-factors of TSS in Bi2Se3 and Sb2Te2Se are determined to be 18 and -6, respectively. This remarkable material dependence opens a new route to control the spins in the TSS.Comment: main text: 17 pages, 4 figures; supplementary: 15 pages, 7 figure

Dynamics vs electronic states of vortex core of high-T_c superconductors investigated by high-frequency impedance measurement

Dynamics of vortices reflects the electronic states of quasiparticles in the core. To understand this, we investigated the following three issues. (1) We investigated the complex surface impedance, Zs, of YBa2Cu3Oy as a function of magnetic field, H. The total features were well expressed by the Coffey-Clem model. From the data, we estimated the viscosity and pinning frequency, which were found to be independent of frequency. In particular, the obtained viscosity definitely shows that the core of vortex of YBa2Cu3Oy is moderately clean. This result suggests that new physics will show up, for the physics of quantum moderately clean vortex core is unknown at all. (2) An anomaly found in the surface reactance at the first order transition (FOT) of vortex lattice was investigated in Bi2Sr2CaCu2Oy with various doping levels. As a result, the anomaly was found only in the samples exhibiting the FOT. On the other hand, we did not observe the anomaly in YBa2Cu3Oy. These suggest that the anomaly is due to the change in the electronic states of the vortices characteristic of materials with very strong anisotropy. (3) We measured H dependence of both the thermal conductivity \kappa(H) and Zs(H) in exactly the same pieces of crystal. We could not find any anomaly in Zs(H) even at the onset of the plateau. This result suggests that the origin of the plateau in \kappa(H) is not a drastic phase transition but is rather gradual crossover.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, Proceedings of Plasma2000(Sendai), to be published in Physica