Topological phase transitions between chiral and helical spin textures in a lattice with spin-orbit coupling and a magnetic field

التفاصيل البيبلوغرافية
العنوان: Topological phase transitions between chiral and helical spin textures in a lattice with spin-orbit coupling and a magnetic field
المؤلفون: Goldman, N., Beugeling, W., Smith, C. Morais
المصدر: EPL 97 (2012) 23003
سنة النشر: 2011
المجموعة: Condensed Matter
Quantum Physics
مصطلحات موضوعية: Condensed Matter - Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics, Condensed Matter - Quantum Gases, Quantum Physics
الوصف: We consider the combined effects of large spin-orbit couplings and a perpendicular magnetic field in a 2D honeycomb fermionic lattice. This system provides an elegant setup to generate versatile spin textures propagating along the edge of a sample. The spin-orbit coupling is shown to induce topological phase transitions between a helical quantum spin Hall phase and a chiral spin-imbalanced quantum Hall state. Besides, we find that the spin orientation of a single topological edge state can be tuned by a Rashba spin-orbit coupling, opening an interesting route towards quantum spin manipulation. We discuss the possible realization of our results using cold atoms trapped in optical lattices, where large synthetic magnetic fields and spin-orbit couplings can be engineered and finely tuned. In particular, this system would lead to the observation of a time-reversal-symmetry-broken quantum spin Hall phase.
Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, Accepted in Europhys. Lett. (Dec 2011)
نوع الوثيقة: Working Paper
DOI: 10.1209/0295-5075/97/23003
URL الوصول: http://arxiv.org/abs/1104.0643
رقم الأكسشن: edsarx.1104.0643
قاعدة البيانات: arXiv
الوصف
DOI:10.1209/0295-5075/97/23003