Science Daily January 13, 2020
Topological insulators’ surface states can be manipulated by the interface environment to display various emergent phenomena. An international team of researchers (New York University, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, University of Pennsylvania, Rutgers University, MIT) used spectromicroscopy, which can track how the motion of surface electrons differs from region to region within a material, to study bismuth selenide collecting data from nearly 1,000 smaller regions. They observed signatures of quantum hybridization in the relationships between moving electrons, such as a repulsion between electronic states that come close to one another in energy. Measurements from this method illuminated the variation of electronic quasiparticles across the material surface. The results provide new insight into the physics of topological insulators by providing the first direct measurement of quantum hybridization between electrons near the surface…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE