Strongly Enhanced Berry Dipole at Topological Phase Transitions in BiTeI

Transitions between topologically distinct electronic states have been predicted in different classes of materials and observed in some. A major goal is the identification of measurable properties that directly expose the topological nature of such transitions. Here, we focus on the giant Rashba mat...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physical review letters 2018-12, Vol.121 (24), p.246403-246403, Article 246403
Main Authors: Facio, Jorge I, Efremov, Dmitri, Koepernik, Klaus, You, Jhih-Shih, Sodemann, Inti, van den Brink, Jeroen
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bismuth
Curvature
Dipoles
Electron states
First principles
Insulators
Iodine
Optoelectronics
Phase transitions
Tellurium
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Summary:Transitions between topologically distinct electronic states have been predicted in different classes of materials and observed in some. A major goal is the identification of measurable properties that directly expose the topological nature of such transitions. Here, we focus on the giant Rashba material bismuth tellurium iodine which exhibits a pressure-driven phase transition between topological and trivial insulators in three dimensions. We demonstrate that this transition, which proceeds through an intermediate Weyl semimetallic state, is accompanied by a giant enhancement of the Berry curvature dipole which can be probed in transport and optoelectronic experiments. From first-principles calculations, we show that the Berry dipole-a vector along the polar axis of this material-has opposite orientations in the trivial and topological insulating phases and peaks at the insulator-to-Weyl critical points, at which the nonlinear Hall conductivity can increase by over 2 orders of magnitude.
ISSN:0031-9007
1079-7114
DOI:10.1103/physrevlett.121.246403