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Chirality flip of Weyl nodes and its manifestation in strained MoTe2
2021, Könye, Viktor, Bouhon, Adrien, Fulga, Ion Cosma, Slager, Robert-Jan, van den Brink, Jeroen, Facio, Jorge I.
Due to their topological charge, or chirality, the Weyl cones present in topological semimetals are considered robust against arbitrary perturbations. One well-understood exception to this robustness is the pairwise creation or annihilation of Weyl cones, which involves the overlap of two oppositely charged nodes in energy and momentum. Here we show that their topological charge can in fact change sign, in a process that involves the merging of not two, but three Weyl nodes. This is facilitated by the presence of rotation and time-reversal symmetries, which constrain the relative positions of Weyl cones in momentum space. We analyze the chirality flip process, showing that transport properties distinguish it from the conventional, double Weyl merging. Moreover, we predict that the chirality flip occurs in MoTe$_2$, where experimentally accessible strain leads to the merging of three Weyl cones close to the Fermi level. Our work sets the stage to further investigate and observe such chirality flipping processes in different topological materials.
Magnetic warping in topological insulators
2022, Naselli, Gabriele, Moghaddam, Ali G., Di Napoli, Solange, Vildosola, Verónica, Fulga, Ion Cosma, van den Brink, Jeroen, Facio, Jorge I.
We analyze the electronic structure of topological surface states in the family of magnetic topological insulators MnBi2nTe3n+1. We show that, at natural-cleavage surfaces, the Dirac cone warping changes its symmetry from hexagonal to trigonal at the magnetic ordering temperature. In particular, an energy splitting develops between the surface states of the same band index but opposite surface momenta upon formation of the long-range magnetic order. As a consequence, measurements of such energy splittings constitute a simple protocol to detect the magnetic ordering via the surface electronic structure, alternative to the detection of the surface magnetic gap. Interestingly, while the latter signals a nonzero surface magnetization, the trigonal warping predicted here is, in addition, sensitive to the direction of the surface magnetic flux. Our results may be particularly useful when the Dirac point is buried in the projection of the bulk states, caused by certain terminations of the crystal or in hole-doped systems, since in both situations the surface magnetic gap itself is not accessible in photoemission experiments.
Finite temperature fluctuation-induced order and responses in magnetic topological insulators
2021, Scholten, Marius, Facio, Jorge I., Ray, Rajyavardhan, Eremin, Ilya M., van den Brink, Jeroen, Nogueira, Flavio S.
We derive an effective field theory model for magnetic topological insulators and predict that a magnetic electronic gap persists on the surface for temperatures above the ordering temperature of the bulk. Our analysis also applies to interfaces of heterostructures consisting of a ferromagnetic and a topological insulator. In order to make quantitative predictions for MnBi2Te4 and for EuS-Bi2Se3 heterostructures, we combine the effective field theory method with density functional theory and Monte Carlo simulations. For MnBi2Te4 we predict an upwards Néel temperature shift at the surface up to 15%, while the EuS-Bi2Se3 interface exhibits a smaller relative shift. The effective theory also predicts induced Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions and a topological magnetoelectric effect, both of which feature a finite temperature and chemical potential dependence.