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 $v_F$ on the surface of a topological insulator across a ferromagnetic strip providing an exchange field ${\mathcal J}$ over a region of width $d$. We show that the conductance of such a junction changes from oscillatory to a monotonically decreasing function of $d$ beyond a critical ${\mathcal J}$. 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 $d$ and potential $V_0$ in the presence of such a ferromagnetic strip and show that beyond a critical ${\mathcal J}$, the criteria of conductance maxima changes from $\chi= e V_0 d/\hbar v_F = n \pi$ to $\chi= (n+1/2)\pi$ for integer $n$. 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 $v_F$, the transport can be controlled using the exchange field ${\mathcal J}$ of a ferromagnetic film over a region of width $d$. The conductance of such a junction changes from oscillatory to a monotonically decreasing function of $d$ beyond a critical ${\mathcal J}$ which leads to the possible realization of magnetic switches using these junctions. For NBM junctions with a potential barrier of width $d$ and potential $V_0$, we find that beyond a critical ${\mathcal J}$, the criteria of conductance maxima changes from $\chi= e V_0 d/\hbar v_F = n \pi$ to $\chi= (n+1/2)\pi$ for integer $n$. 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