Topological Valley Currents in Gapped Dirac Materials

Yuri D. Lensky, Justin C. W. Song, Polnop Samutpraphoot, and Leonid S. Levitov
Phys. Rev. Lett. 114, 256601 – Published 24 June 2015

Abstract

Gapped 2D Dirac materials, in which inversion symmetry is broken by a gap-opening perturbation, feature a unique valley transport regime. Topological valley currents in such materials are dominated by bulk currents produced by electronic states just beneath the gap rather than by edge modes. The system ground state hosts dissipationless persistent valley currents existing even when topologically protected edge modes are absent. Valley currents induced by an external bias are characterized by a quantized half-integer valley Hall conductivity. The undergap currents dominate magnetization and the charge Hall effect in a light-induced valley-polarized state.

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  • Received 6 December 2014

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.114.256601

© 2015 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Yuri D. Lensky1, Justin C. W. Song2, Polnop Samutpraphoot1, and Leonid S. Levitov1

  • 1Physics Department, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA
  • 2Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics and Institute for Quantum Information and Matter, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA

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Vol. 114, Iss. 25 — 26 June 2015

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