IQIM Postdoctoral and Graduate Student Seminar

Abstract:  Topological insulator has attracted enormous attention in physics community in the last decade. Not only its theoretical study deepened the understanding of the topological nature of condensed matter systems, but it has provided new opportunities in pratical applications such as spintronic devices, thermoelectric materials, and photovolatics. We present a transfer-matrix treatment of electronic local density of states in topological insulators with surface impurities. The method allows us to reduce the computational complexity into a single layer problem of  whole system by analytically integrating bulk layers. In a concrete example of 2d topological insulator, we discuss how impurities on the top layer reconstruct the local density of chiral edge states which recovers to a clean system form in the strong disorder limit.