- Physical Review Journals
All JournalsPhysics Magazine

Physical Review Research

Reuse & Permissions

It is not necessary to obtain permission to reuse this article or its components as it is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI are maintained. Please note that some figures may have been included with permission from other third parties. It is your responsibility to obtain the proper permission from the rights holder directly for these figures.

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation
  • Letter
  • Open Access

Field-induced charge symmetry revealed by nuclear magnetic resonance in the topological insulator Bi2Te3

R. Guehne1,*, J. Haase1, C. Shekhar2, and C. Felser2

  • 1Felix Bloch Institute for Solid State Physics, Leipzig University, Linnéstraße 5, 04103 Leipzig, Germany
  • 2Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids, Nöthnitzer Straße 40, 01187 Dresden, Germany

  • *r.guehne@physik.uni-leipzig.de
PDF

Phys. Rev. Research 3, L012018 – Published 19 February, 2021

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.3.L012018

Abstract

Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) was recently shown to measure the bulk band inversion of Bi2Se3 through changes in the Bi209 nuclear quadrupole interaction, and the corresponding tensor of the local electric field gradient was found to follow, surprisingly, the direction of the external magnetic field if the sample is rotated. This manifests a hidden property of the charge carriers in the bulk of this topological insulator, which is explored here with another material, Bi2Te3. It is found that two electric field gradients appear to be present at Bi209, one rests with the lattice, as usual, while a second follows the external field if it is rotated with respect to the crystal axes. These electronic degrees of freedom and their lifetime is believed to be responsible for an alternate quadrupolar relaxation that should lead to other special properties including the electronic specific heat.

View figure in article

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Article Text

References (32)

  1. Y. Ando, Topological insulator materials, J. Phys. Soc. Jpn. 82, 102001 (2013).
  2. Y. Xia, D. Qian, D. Hsieh, L. Wray, A. Pal, H. Lin, A. Bansil, D. Grauer, Y. S. Hor, R. J. Cava, and M. Z. Hasan, Observation of a large-gap topological-insulator class with a single Dirac cone on the surface, Nat. Phys. 5, 398 (2009).
  3. T. Zhang, P. Cheng, X. Chen, J. F. Jia, X. Ma, Ke He, L. Wang, H. Zhang, Xi Dai, Z. Fang, X. Xie, and Q. K. Xue, Experimental Demonstration of Topological Surface States Protected by Time-Reversal Symmetry, Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 266803 (2009).
  4. F. Zhang, C. L. Kane, and E. J. Mele, Surface states of topological insulators, Phys. Rev. B 86, 081303(R) (2012).
  5. H. Zhang, C.-X. Liu, X.-L. Qi, Xi Dai, Z. Fang, and S.-C. Zhang, Topological insulators in Bi2Se3, Bi2Te3 and Sb2Te3 with a single Dirac cone on the surface, Nat. Phys. 5, 438 (2009).
  6. D. Koumoulis, T. C. Chasapis, R. E. Taylor, M. P. Lake, D. King, N. N. Jarenwattananon, G. A. Fiete, M. G. Kanatzidis, and Louis-S. Bouchard, NMR Probe of Metallic States in Nanoscale Topological Insulators, Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 026602 (2013).
  7. W. Papawassiliou, A. Jaworski, A. J. Pell, J. H. Jang, Y. Kim, S.-C. Lee, H. J. Kim, Y. Alwahedi, S. Alhassan, A. Subrati, M. Fardis, M. Karagianni, N. Panopoulos, J. Dolinšek, and G. Papavassiliou, Resolving Dirac electrons with broadband high-resolution NMR, Nat. Commun. 11, 1 (2020).
  8. S. Boutin, J. Ramírez-Ruiz, and I. Garate, Tight-binding theory of NMR shifts in topological insulators Bi2Se3 and Bi2Te3, Phys. Rev. B 94, 115204 (2016).
  9. L. Gioia, M. G. Christie, U. Zülicke, M. Governale, and A. J. Sneyd, Spherical topological insulator nanoparticles: Quantum size effects and optical transitions, Phys. Rev. B 100, 205417 (2019).
  10. N. M. Georgieva, D. Rybicki, R. Guehne, G. V. M. Williams, S. V. Chong, K. Kadowaki, I. Garate, and J. Haase, Se77 nuclear magnetic resonance of topological insulator Bi2Se3, Phys. Rev. B 93, 195120 (2016).
  11. R. Guehne, V. Chlan, G. V. M. Williams, S. V. Chong, K. Kadowaki, A. Pöppl, and J. Haase, Unusual Bi209 NMR quadrupole effects in topological insulator Bi2Se3, J. Magn. Reson. 302, 34 (2019).
  12. Charles P. Slichter, Principles of Magnetic Resonance, third enlarged ed. (Springer, Berlin, 1990).
  13. C.-X. Liu, X.-L. Qi, H. J. Zhang, Xi Dai, Z. Fang, and S.-C. Zhang, Model hamiltonian for topological insulators, Phys. Rev. B 82, 045122 (2010).
  14. H. Köhler and E. Wöchner, The g-factor of the conduction electrons in Bi2Se3, Phys. Status Solidi B 67, 665 (1975).
  15. O. Sushkov (private communication).
  16. B.-L. Young, Z.-Yo Lai, Z. Xu, A. Yang, G. D. Gu, Z.-H. Pan, T. Valla, G. J. Shu, R. Sankar, and F. C. Chou, Probing the bulk electronic states of Bi2Se3 using nuclear magnetic resonance, Phys. Rev. B 86, 075137 (2012).
  17. D. M. Nisson, A. P. Dioguardi, P. Klavins, C. H. Lin, K. Shirer, A. C. Shockley, J. Crocker, and N. J. Curro, Nuclear magnetic resonance as a probe of electronic states of Bi2Se3, Phys. Rev. B 87, 195202 (2013).
  18. D. M. Nisson, A. P. Dioguardi, X. Peng, D. Yu, and N. J. Curro, Anomalous nuclear magnetic resonance spectra in Bi2Se3 nanowires, Phys. Rev. B 90, 125121 (2014).
  19. S. Mukhopadhyay, S. Krämer, H. Mayaffre, H. F. Legg, M. Orlita, C. Berthier, M. Horvatić, G. Martinez, M. Potemski, B. A. Piot et al., Hyperfine coupling and spin polarization in the bulk of the topological insulator Bi2Se3, Phys. Rev. B 91, 081105(R) (2015).
  20. T. Wu, H. Mayaffre, S. Krämer, M. Horvatić, C. Berthier, W. N. Hardy, R. Liang, D. A. Bonn, and M.-H. Julien, Magnetic-field-induced charge-stripe order in the high-temperature superconductor YBa2Cu3Oy, Nature 477, 191 (2011).
  21. S. Reichardt, M. Jurkutat, R. Guehne, J. Kohlrautz, A. Erb, and J. Haase, Bulk charge ordering in the CuO2 plane of the cuprate superconductor YBa2Cu3O6.9 by high-pressure NMR, Condens. Matter 3, 23 (2018).
  22. Y. Tokunaga, D. Aoki, Y. Homma, S. Kambe, H. Sakai, S. Ikeda, T. Fujimoto, R. E. Walstedt, H. Yasuoka, E. Yamamoto, A. Nakamura, and Y. Shiokawa, NMR Evidence for Higher-Order Multipole Order Parameters in NpO2, Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 257601 (2006).
  23. J. Vaara and P. Pyykkö, Magnetic-field-induced quadrupole splitting in gaseous and liquid Xe131 NMR: Quadratic and Quartic Field Dependence, Phys. Rev. Lett. 86, 3268 (2001).
  24. M. Aiga and J. Itoh, Nuclear electric quadrupole interaction of Ir nuclei in ferromagnetic dilute alloys of iron and nickel, J. Phys. Soc. Jpn. 37, 967 (1974).
  25. G. Seewald, E. Zech, and H. Haas, Spin-orbit induced noncubic charge distribution in cubic ferromagnets. II. Tight-binding analysis, Phys. Rev. B 66, 174402 (2002).
  26. C. E. ViolBarbosa, C. Shekhar, B. Yan, S. Ouardi, Eiji Ikenaga, G. H. Fecher, and C. Felser, Direct observation of band bending in the topological insulator Bi2Se3, Phys. Rev. B 88, 195128 (2013).
  27. J. Ramírez-Ruiz, C. Gauvin-Ndyae, and I. Garate (private communication).
  28. M. Takigawa, J. L. Smith, and W. L. Hults, Temperature-dependent anisotropy of Cu(2) nuclear-relaxation rate in YBa2Cu3O7 below Tc, Phys. Rev. B 44, 7764 (1991).
  29. J. Van Kranendonk, Theory of quadrupolar nuclear spin-lattice relaxation, Physica 20, 781 (1954).
  30. A. Suter, M. Mali, J. Roos, and D. Brinkmann, Mixed magnetic and quadrupolar relaxation in the presence of a dominant static Zeeman Hamiltonian, J. Phys.: Condens. Matter. 10, 5977 (1998).
  31. H. Köhler, Anisotropic g-factor of the conduction electrons in Bi2Te3, Phys. Status Solidi B 75, 127 (1976).
  32. C. Fu, Y. Sun, and C. Felser, Topological thermoelectrics, APL Mater. 8, 040913 (2020).

Outline

Information

Phys. Rev. Research 3, L012018– Published 19 February, 2021
  • Received 31 August 2020
  • Accepted 6 January 2021
Crossmark - Check for updates button
Creative Commons Logo

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

Published by the American Physical Society

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation