Medhi, Amal and Shenoy, Vijay B (2012) Continuum theory of edge states of topological insulators: variational principle and boundary conditions. In: Journal of physics-condensed matter, 24 (35).
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Abstract
We develop a continuum theory to model low energy excitations of a generic four-band time reversal invariant electronic system with boundaries. We propose a variational energy functional for the wavefunctions which allows us to derive natural boundary conditions valid for such systems. Our formulation is particularly suited for developing a continuum theory of the protected edge/surface excitations of topological insulators both in two and three dimensions. By a detailed comparison of our analytical formulation with tight binding calculations of ribbons of topological insulators modelled by the Bernevig-Hughes-Zhang (BHZ) Hamiltonian, we show that the continuum theory with a natural boundary condition provides an appropriate description of the low energy physics.
Item Type: | Journal Article |
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Publication: | Journal of physics-condensed matter |
Publisher: | IOP Publishing limited |
Additional Information: | Copyright for this article is belongs to IOP Publishing limited. |
Department/Centre: | Division of Physical & Mathematical Sciences > Physics |
Date Deposited: | 19 Nov 2012 06:57 |
Last Modified: | 19 Nov 2012 07:04 |
URI: | http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/45127 |
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