First-principles study of temperature effects in topological insulator phase diagrams

ORAL

Abstract

Recent studies have identified several tunable three-dimensional topological insulators. Upon varying experimental parameters such as pressure or doping, these materials exhibit a transition between a trivial and a topological insulating phase. We present a first-principles study of temperature effects in the family of alloyed BiTlS$_2$ / BiTlSe$_2$ topological phase transition materials. Through the electron-phonon coupling, the electronic bands being renormalized at finite temperature allow for a topological phase transition at some critical temperature. We find a temperature-doping phase diagram having a confined topological phase region, with the topological phase suppressed at high temperature. We also discuss the converse scenario in which phonons might favour the topological phase, as previously anticipated.

*This work was supported by the NSF under Grant No. DMR15-1508412 and the DOE under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231.

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Authors

  • Gabriel Antonius

    • University of California at Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab

  • Steven G. Louie

    • University of California at Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab
    • Physics Department, UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab
    • University of California at Berkeley
    • University of California, Berkeley
    • University of California at Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
    • UC Berkeley and LBNL
    • UCB Physics and LBNL MSD