Abstract
Layered van der Waals (vdW) topological materials, especially the recently discovered MnBi2Te4-family magnetic topological insulators (TIs), have aroused great attention. However, there has been a serious debate about whether the surface states are gapped or gapless for antiferromagnetic (AFM) TI MnBi2Te4, which is crucial to the prospect of various magnetic topological phenomena. Here, a minimal three-Dirac-fermion approach is developed to generally describe topological surface states of nonmagnetic/magnetic vdW TIs under the modulation of the interlayer vdW gap. In particular, this approach is applied to address the controversial issues concerning the surface states of vdW AFM TIs. Remarkably, topologically protected gapless Dirac-cone surface states are found to arise due to a small expansion of the interlayer vdW gap on the surface, when the Chern number equals zero for the surface ferromagnetic layer; while the surface states remain gapped in all other cases. These results are further confirmed by our first-principles calculations on AFM TI MnBi2Te4. The theorectically discovered gapless Dirac-cone states provide a unique mechanism for understanding the puzzle of the experimentally observed gapless surface states in MnBi2Te4. This work also provides a promising way for experiments to realize the intrinsic magnetic quantum anomalous Hall effect in MnBi2Te4 films with a large energy gap.
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This work was supported by the National Key Projects for Research and Development of China (Grant Nos. 2021YFA1400400, 2017YFA0303203, and 2022YFA1403602), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant No. 020414380185), the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (Grant No. BK20200007), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 12074181, 12104217, 11834006, and 12174182), and the Fok Ying-Tong Education Foundation of China (Grant No. 161006). D. Wang is supported by the program A/B for Outstanding PhD candidate of Nanjing University.
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The supporting information is available online at http://phys.scichina.com and https://link.springer.com. The supporting materials are published as submitted, without typesetting or editing. The responsibility for scientific accuracy and content remains entirely with the authors. See the supplementary materials for the detailed derivation of the PT symmetry, results of the ferromagnetic case, surface LDOS by three-Dirac-fermion model, application to other vdW magnetic TIs, and methods for first-principles calculations, which include refs. [71–76].
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Three-Dirac-fermion approach to unexpected universal gapless surface states in van der Waals magnetic topological insulators
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Wang, D., Wang, H., Xing, D. et al. Three-Dirac-fermion approach to unexpected universal gapless surface states in van der Waals magnetic topological insulators. Sci. China Phys. Mech. Astron. 66, 297211 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11433-023-2161-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11433-023-2161-9