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Excited electron and spin dynamics in topological insulator: A perspective from ab initio non-adiabatic molecular
Chuanyu Zhao1, Qijing Zheng1, Jin Zhao1,2,3
1Department of Physics, ICQD/Hefei National Research Center for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, and CAS Key Laboratory of Strongly-Coupled Quantum Matter Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, China.
Abstract:
We perform an ab initio non-adiabatic molecular dynamics simulation to investigate the non-equilibrium spin and electron dynamics in a prototypical topological insulator (TI) Bi2Se3. Different from the ground state, we reveal that backscattering can happen in an oscillating manner between time-reversal pair topological surface states (TSSs) in the non-equilibrium dynamics. Analysis shows the phonon excitation induces orbital composition change by electron-phonon interaction, which further stimulates spin canting through spin-orbit coupling. The spin canting of time-reversal pair TSSs leads to the non-zero non-adiabatic coupling between them and then issues in backscattering. Both the spin canting and backscattering result in ultrafast spin relaxation with a timescale around 100 fs. This study provides critical insights into the non-equilibrium electron and spin dynamics in TI at the ab initio level and paves a way for the design of ultrafast spintronic materials.
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