The strong side of weak topological insulators

Details The strong side of weak topological insulators The strong side of weak topological insulators

2011-05-22

arxiv.org/abs/1105.4351v1

Physics

Condensed Matter

Materials Science

11 pages, 7 figures

Scientific paper

Three-dimensional topological insulators are classified into "strong" (STI) and "weak" (WTI) according to the nature of their surface states. While the surface states of the STI are topologically protected, in the WTI they are believed to be very fragile to disorder. In this work we show that the WTI surface states are actually protected from any random perturbation which does not break time-reversal symmetry, and does not close the bulk energy gap. Consequently, the conductivity of metallic surfaces in the clean system will remain finite even in the presence of strong disorder of this type. In the weak disorder limit the surfaces are perfect metals, and strong surface disorder only acts to push them inwards. We find that WTI's differ from STI's primarily in their anisotropy, and that the anisotropy is not a sign of their weakness but rather of their richness.

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