Physics Commons^™

Complex Band Structure Of Topologically Protected Edge States, Xiaoqian Dang, John D. Burton, Alan Kalitsov, Julian P. Velev, Evgeny Y. Tsymbal

Evgeny Tsymbal Publications

One of the great successes of modern condensed matter physics is the discovery of topological insulators (TIs). A thorough investigation of their properties could bring such materials from fundamental research to potential applications. Here, we report on theoretical investigations of the complex band structure (CBS) of two-dimensional (2D) TIs. We utilize the tight-binding form of the Bernevig, Hughes, and Zhang model as a prototype for a generic 2D TI. Based on this model, we outline the conditions that the CBS must satisfy in order to guarantee the presence of topologically protected edge states. Furthermore, we use the Green’s function technique …