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Published on: January 21, 2016
Nonlinear Ballistic Response of Quantum Spin Hall Edge States
Pankaj Bhalla1,2,3, Ming-Xun Deng4,5, Rui-Qiang Wang4,5
1Beijing Computational Science Research Centre, Beijing 100193, China.
Abstract:
Topological edge states (TES) exhibit dissipationless transport, yet their dispersion has never been probed. Here we show that the nonlinear electrical response of ballistic TES ascertains the presence of symmetry breaking terms, such as deviations from nonlinearity and tilted spin quantization axes. The nonlinear response stems from discontinuities in the band occupation on either side of a Zeeman gap, and its direction is set by the spin orientation with respect to the Zeeman field. We determine the edge dispersion for several classes of TES and discuss experimental measurement.
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