Dephasing effect on backscattering of helical surface states in 3D topological insulators

Phys Rev Lett. 2014 Jul 25;113(4):046805. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.113.046805. Epub 2014 Jul 24.

Abstract

We analyze the dephasing effect on the backscattering behavior of the helical surface states in 3D topological insulators. We show that the combination of dephasing and impurity scattering can cause backscattering in the helical states. Especially for the charge impurity case, the backscattering cross section becomes extremely large around the Dirac point. This large backscattering behavior can lead to the anomalous "gaplike" features found in recent experiments [T. Sato et al., Nat. Phys. 7, 840 (2011)].