Abstract
© 2015 IOP Publishing Ltd and Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft. We demonstrate single atom anisotropic magnetoresistance on the surface of a topological insulator, arising from the interplay between the helical spin-momentum-locked surface electronic structure and the hybridization of the magnetic adatom states. Our first-principles quantum transport calculations based on density functional theory for Mn on Bi2Se3 elucidate the underlying mechanism. We complement our findings with a two dimensional model valid for both single adatoms and magnetic clusters, which leads to a proposed device setup for experimental realization. Our results provide an explanation for the conflicting scattering experiments on magnetic adatoms on topological insulator surfaces, and reveal the real space spin texture around the magnetic impurity.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 033021 |
| Journal | New Journal of Physics |
| Volume | 17 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Mar 12 2015 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
KAUST Repository Item: Exported on 2020-10-01Acknowledgements: AN thanks the Irish Research Council for financial support (EMBARK initiative). IR and SS acknowledge support from KAUST (ACRAB project). We thank Aaron Hurley and Andrea Droghetti for useful discussions and Alin Elena for technical support at ICHEC. Computational resources have been provided by Irish Centre for High-End Computing (ICHEC) and Trinity Centre for High Performance Computing.
This publication acknowledges KAUST support, but has no KAUST affiliated authors.