Electronic structure near an impurity and terrace on the surface of a 3-dimensional topological insulator

Details Electronic structure near an impurity and terrace on the surface of a 3-dimensional topological insulator Electronic structure near an impurity and terrace on the surface of a 3-dimensional topological insulator

2009-10-15

arxiv.org/abs/0910.2822v1

Physics

Condensed Matter

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics

7 pages, 5 figures

Scientific paper

Motivated by recent scanning tunneling microscopy experiments on surfaces of Bi$_{1-x}$Sb$_{x'}$\cite{yazdanistm,gomesstm} and Bi$_2$Te$_3$,\cite{kaptunikstm,xuestm} we theoretically study the electronic structure of a 3-dimensional (3D) topological insulator in the presence of a local impurity or a domain wall on its surface using a 3D lattice model. While the local density of states (LDOS) oscillates significantly in space at energies above the bulk gap, the oscillation due to the in-gap surface Dirac fermions are very weak. The extracted modulation wave number as a function of energy satisfies the Dirac dispersion for in-gap energies and follows the border of the bulk continuum above the bulk gap. We have also examined analytically the effects of the defects by using a pure Dirac fermion model for the surface states and found that the LDOS decays asymptotically faster at least by a factor of 1/r than that in normal metals, consistent with the results obtained from our lattice model.

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