Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
Rep Prog Phys. 2013 May;76(5):056501. doi: 10.1088/0034-4885/76/5/056501. Epub 2013 Apr 4.
Topological insulators (TIs) have an insulating bulk but a metallic surface. In the simplest case, the surface electronic structure of a three-dimensional (3D) TI is described by a single two-dimensional (2D) Dirac cone. A single 2D Dirac fermion cannot be realized in an isolated 2D system with time-reversal symmetry, but rather owes its existence to the topological properties of the 3D bulk wavefunctions. The transport properties of such a surface state are of considerable current interest; they have some similarities with graphene, which also realizes Dirac fermions, but have several unique features in their response to magnetic fields. In this review we give an overview of some of the main quantum transport properties of TI surfaces. We focus on the efforts to use quantum interference phenomena, such as weak anti-localization and the Aharonov-Bohm effect, to verify in a transport experiment the Dirac nature of the surface state and its defining properties. In addition to explaining the basic ideas and predictions of the theory, we provide a survey of recent experimental work.
拓扑绝缘体 (TI) 具有绝缘体但具有金属表面。在最简单的情况下，三维 (3D) TI 的表面电子结构由单个二维 (2D) 狄拉克锥描述。在具有时间反演对称性的孤立二维系统中，不能实现单个二维狄拉克费米子，而是由于三维体波函数的拓扑性质而存在。这种表面状态的输运性质引起了相当大的当前兴趣；它们与也实现了狄拉克费米子的石墨烯有一些相似之处，但在其对磁场的响应中具有一些独特的特征。在这篇综述中，我们概述了 TI 表面的一些主要量子输运性质。我们专注于利用量子干涉现象，例如弱反局域和 Aharonov-Bohm 效应，在输运实验中验证表面态的狄拉克性质及其定义性质。除了解释理论的基本思想和预测外，我们还对最近的实验工作进行了调查。
