Valley-Polarized Quantum Anomalous Hall Effect in Silicene

Hui Pan, Zhenshan Li, Cheng-Cheng Liu, Guobao Zhu, Zhenhua Qiao, and Yugui Yao

Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 106802 – Published 12 March 2014

Abstract

We find theoretically a new quantum state of matter—the valley-polarized quantum anomalous Hall state in silicene. In the presence of Rashba spin-orbit coupling and an exchange field, silicene hosts a quantum anomalous Hall state with Chern number $C = 2$ . We show that through tuning the Rashba spin-orbit coupling, a topological phase transition results in a valley-polarized quantum anomalous Hall state, i.e., a quantum state that exhibits the electronic properties of both the quantum valley Hall state (valley Chern number $C_{v} = 3$ ) and quantum anomalous Hall state with $C = - 1$ . This finding provides a platform for designing dissipationless valleytronics in a more robust manner.

Received 22 April 2013

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.112.106802

Authors & Affiliations

Hui Pan¹, Zhenshan Li¹, Cheng-Cheng Liu², Guobao Zhu³, Zhenhua Qiao^4,5,6,*, and Yugui Yao^2,†

¹Department of Physics, Beihang University, Beijing 100191, China
²School of Physics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China
³Department of Physics, Heze University, Heze, Shandong 274015, China
⁴Department of Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, China
⁵ICQD, Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at Microscale, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, China
⁶Department of Physics, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712, USA

^*qiao@ustc.edu.cn
^†ygyao@bit.edu.cn

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Vol. 112, Iss. 10 — 14 March 2014

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