1 research outputs found
Quasiparticle Scattering in the Rashba Semiconductor BiTeBr: The Roles of Spin and Defect Lattice Site
Observations of quasiparticle
interference have been used in recent
years to examine exotic carrier behavior at the surfaces of emergent
materials, connecting carrier dispersion and scattering dynamics to
real-space features with atomic resolution. We observe quasiparticle
interference in the strongly Rashba split 2DEG-like surface band found
at the tellurium termination of BiTeBr and examine two mechanisms
governing quasiparticle scattering: We confirm the suppression of
spin-flip scattering by comparing measured quasiparticle interference
with a spin-dependent elastic scattering model applied to the calculated
spectral function. We also use atomically resolved STM maps to identify
point defect lattice sites and spectro-microscopy imaging to discern
their varying scattering strengths, which we understand in terms of
the calculated orbital characteristics of the surface band. Defects
on the Bi sublattice cause the strongest scattering of the predominantly
Bi 6p derived surface band, with other defects causing nearly no scattering
near the conduction band minimum