Regensburg 2016 – scientific programme

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DS: Fachverband Dünne Schichten

DS 46: Topological Insulators I
(Joint session of DS and HL, organized by HL)

DS 46.6: Talk

Thursday, March 10, 2016, 16:30–16:45, H10

Emergence of quantum spin Hall and half-topological states at Graphene/TMDC heterostructures — •Denis Kochan, Martin Gmitra, Petra Högl, and Jaroslav Fabian — Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Regensburg, Germany

We discuss orbital and spin-orbital proximity effects emerging in graphene deposited on a monolayer transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs: MoS2, MoSe2, WS2, WSe2) and analyze the impact on spin transport in such graphene/TMDC heterostructures. First-principles investigations show that graphene on MoS2, MoSe2, and WS2 has a topologically trivial band structure, while graphene on WSe2 exhibits inverted bands. The essential low energy physics can be well described by a symmetry inspired realistic tight-binding Hamiltonian. We predict topologically protected helical edge states for graphene zigzag nanoribbons on WSe2, demonstrating the emergence of the quantum spin Hall effect. Our model also features ``half- topological states", which are protected against time-reversal disorder on one edge only. Unlike in pristine graphene, the proximity spin-orbit coupling in graphene on TMDCs is significant (orders of meV), making the predicted effect testable experimentally.

This research was supported by DFG SFB 689, GRK 1570 and by the EU Seventh Framework Programme under Grant Agreement No. 604391 Graphene Flagship.