Dresden 2014 – scientific programme

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O: Fachverband Oberflächenphysik

O 42: Topological Insulators: Theory (HL jointly with MA, O, TT)

O 42.2: Talk

Wednesday, April 2, 2014, 09:45–10:00, POT 151

Point contacts and localization in generic helical liquids — •Christoph P. Orth, Grégory Strübi, and Thomas L. Schmidt — University of Basel, Switzerland

We consider two helical liquids on opposite edges of a two-dimensional topological insulator, which are connected by one or several local tunnel junctions. In the presence of spatially inhomogeneous Rashba spin-orbit coupling, the spin of the helical edge states is momentum dependent, and this spin texture can be different on opposite edges. We demonstrate that this has a strong impact on the electron transport between the edges. In particular, in the case of many random tunnel contacts, the localization length depends strongly on the spin textures of the edge states.