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Updated: May 30, 2026

Experimental Methods for Spin- and Angle-Resolved Photoemission Spectroscopy Combined with Polarization-Variable Laser
Published on: June 28, 2018
Passage from spin-polarized surface states to unpolarized quantum well states in topologically nontrivial Sb films
1Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1110 West Green Street, Urbana, Illinois 61801-3080, USA.
Abstract:
Topological materials have unusual surface spin properties including a net surface spin current protected by the bulk symmetry properties. When such materials are reduced to thin films, their gapless spin-polarized surface states must connect, by analytic continuation, to bulk-derived quantum-well states, which are spin-unpolarized in centrosymmetric systems. The nature of this passage in a model system, Sb films, is investigated. Angle-resolved photoemission shows a smooth transition, while calculations elucidate the correlated evolution of the spin and charge distributions in real space.
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