A Pedagogical Review of Topological Insulators

Yi-Chun Chen
Topological insulators, although insulated in the bulk, own conducting states on the edge and
lead to edge spin currents. The strange behavior of topological insulators is the result of topological
index in energy bands and time-reversal symmetry. In this article, we will review topological insula-
tors from quantum Hall eect, which rst connected topology and energy bands, then generalize it
to quantum spin Hall eect, which stands for the phenomena on topological insulators, and demon-
strate the topological Z2 numbers. Finally, Graphene and HgTe/CdTe quantum well are introduced
as models, especially the latter one was conrmed as topological insulators by experiments. For
the more development such as 3D topological insulators, topological eld theory and topological
superconductors, we put them in the end as an extension.
* This review paper is the nal project of the course Theory of Solids.
INTRODUCTION
Topological insulators were rst predicted by Kane
and Mele in 2005 [1] [2]. They predicted that when
the spin-orbit interactions are taken into account in
graphene, the resulting Hamiltonian will behave like
two copies of Hamiltonian in Quantum Hall Eect
(QHE) for each spin. They termed such a conse-
quence as Quantum Spin Hall Eect (QSHE). Just
like QHE, QSHE also provides the gap-less conduct-
ing states on the boundaries while the bulk remains
insulated. However, dierent from QHE, QSHE pro-
vides spin current rather than charge current. It is
worthy to emphasize that such spin current is robust
due to the so-called Z
2
topological invariant. Actu-
ally, it is such Z
2
invariant distinguish the topologi-
cal insulators from other usual insulators. Although
graphenes are proposed as topological insulators by
Kane and Mele in 2005, it never comes true because
the spin-orbit interactions in carbon atoms are weak.
Hence people look up to the heavy elements that own
the strong spin-orbit interactions. Bernevig, Hughes
and Zhang (BHZ) considered the HgTe/CdTe quan-
tum well and provided the theoretical prediction [3].
In such quantum well, HgTe is sandwiched between
layers of CdTe. When the thickness of HgTe is lager
than 6.3nm, the s-type and p-type bands will inverse
in HgTe but remain same in CdTe. BHZ showed
that the inversion of the bands leads to non-trivial
Z
2
invariant and the quantum well can be treated
as topological insulator. Within one year after the
BHZ proposal, the Wurzburg group, led by Laurens
Molenkamp, made the devices and performed the ex-
periment [4], showing the rst observation of topo-
logical insulator. In this paper, we give a review of
the development introduced above. We rst intro-
duce QHE and the connection between topology and
physics. Then we talk about topological number Z
2
in topological insulators and its models, including the
graphene model and quantum well model with experi-
mental observations. This article focuses on 2D topo-
logical insulator. The 3D case and other developments
will be discussed in the conclusion and extension part.
SHORT REVIEW OF QHE
QHE (we focus on Integer QHE here) was discov-
ered by v. Klitzing et al. in 1980. At low temperature
and under high magnetic elds, the Hall conductivity

xy
will be quantized

xy
=
e
2
h
n (1)
,where n is an integer. Traditionally, people use the
concept of Landau level to understand QHE as fol-
lowing: under magnetic eld, the classical circular
motions of electrons could be treated as simple har-
monic oscillation with frequency
c
= eB/m
e
C and
the energy will be quantized as E
n
=
c
(n + 1/2).
If some Landau levels are occupied and the rest are
empty, than we can roughly view Landau levels as a
band structure and the treat it as a insulator.
Near the boundary, the connement potential leads
the bands no longer at and there will be some edge
current accounted for (1). However, for usually in-
sulators, there is no such edge current. So what is
the dierence between ordinary insulators and QHE
insulators? Thouless, Kohmoto, Nightingale and den
Nijs (TKNN) gave the answer in 1982 [5]. In their
breakthrough paper, they pointed out that the dier-
ence is caused by topology dened on reciprocal space.
They dened TKNN topological invariant (or Chern
invariant in math) as
n =
1
2
_
BZ
f d
2
k (2)
,where integral is over the rst Brillouin zone and
f is the Berry ux which is dened as the curl of
Berry connection A = iu
k
|
k
|u
k
, i.e., f = A
and the u
k
is the Bloch wave function. The concept
of Berry connection and ux was rst proposed by
Michael Berry in 1984 [6]. The TKNN invariant is
the total Berry ux in the rst Brillouin zone. The
2
integer property of the integral (2) is actually analo-
gous to Gauss-Bonnet theorem in mathematics : the
integral of curvature of whole surface divided by 2
will be an integer. For example, such integral for a
ball is 2 and 0 for a donut. Obviously, (2) only de-
ned to one band and we can easily extend to whole
band structure. That is N =

all bands
n. What does
(2) have something to do with the Hall conductivity
? By linear respond theorem,

xy
=
ie
2
hV m
2

Ea<E
F
<E
b
a | P
x
| b b | P
y
| a
(E
a
E
b
)
2
(x y)
(3)
,where V is the system volume. By some calculation,
we can show that (3) is equivalent to (1) by applying
the integer value in (2). So now we have a connection
between topology and band theory in the Hall conduc-
tivity. TKNN invariant is the topological signature of
the ground states of insulators.
In mathematics, dierent Gauss-Bonnet number
can be used to dene dierent classes of surface. For
instance, n = 2 for no-hole objects like ball, pyra-
mid,cubic and n = 0 for one-hole objects like donut
and mug. If you want to change the Gauss-Bonnet
number, you have to create a hole or ll a hole on
surface. In physics, if you want to change the TKNN
invariant, you have to close a gap to change the topol-
ogy of ground states. For example, if there is a QHE
sample, the interface between this sample and other
insulators will have gap-less states. This is because
when we go from the QHE sample to other insulators,
the topological quantity has changed. That is the rea-
son why there is a metallic states on the boundary for
edge current. To summarize the introduction of QHE,
there is an illustration in Figure 1.
Figure1: Illustration of QHE states and ordinary
insulated states : (a) Ordinary insulated states (b)
an example of band structure of an ordinary insulator
(d) QHE states (e) Landau levels (c)(d) Two objects
for dierent topological numbers and illustrate that
QHE states are vert dierent from ordinary insulated
states. Quoted from [7].
Before going to the QSHE properties, we review
the QHE eect on graphene. When we consider the
low-energy dynamics of electrons in graphene, we only
have to take into account the electrons near K and K
points in k-space. We call them Dirac electrons which
satisfy H(q) = v
F
q , where q = kK or k = K

. If
we add a magnetic eld, which is fully symmetric on
lattice and its average is zero, then the Hamiltonian
become H(q) = v
F
q + m
z
. Such magnetic eld
will break the time-reversal symmetry while the origin
parity symmetry requires the m term in Hamiltonian
at K point and K point should have opposite signs.
Haldane [9] pointed out such gapped states (due to
m = 0) is a QHE insulated states rather than ordi-
nary insulated states. To prove that, we rst rewrite
the Hamiltonian in the form H(k) = h(k) . It is well
known that for two-level system (here we consider P
z
orbital tight-binding), the Berry ux will be related
to the unit vector

h=h(k)/|h(k)| and the TKNN in-
variant (2) becomes
n =
1
4
_
_

kx

h
ky

h
_

h d
2
k (4)
Then now the integer n is just the number of unit vec-
tor

h wrapping around the unit sphere. When k is near
Dirac point, it will provide e
2
/2h to
xy
through (4).
There are two Dirac cone in rst Brollouin zone, so it
results
xy
= e
2
/h (They are added due to m

= m).
To this end, we can see that it is a QHE insulated state
on the graphene and leads to edge current.
Z2 INVARIANT IN TOPOLOGICAL
INSULATORS
We hope to use spin-orbit interaction as a new
source of insulators rather than magnetic eld. How-
ever, there is a big dierence between them. Spin-
orbit interaction will hold the time-reversal symmetry
while magnetic eld will break it in QHE. That is to
say, TKNN invariant will no longer useful for classi-
fying the new class of insulators. To develop the new
topological invariant, we need to understand the role
of time-reversal symmetry for elections.
Time-reversal operator can be written as =
exp(iS
y
/)K where S
y
is the y spin operator and
K is the complex conjugation operator. For elections,

2
= 1. This leads to the famous Kramers the-
orem, which indicates that all eigenstates of time-
reversal invariant Hamiltonian are at least double de-
generate. In the absence of spin-orbit interaction, the
band structure of spin-up and spin-down electrons are
overlapped, so the Kramer degenerate states are just
for up-spin and down-spin. For spin-orbit interaction
case, the result is non-trivial. The Kramer pair could
be |u(k) and |u(k) = |u(k) ,because both of
them are the eigenstates of the time-reversal-invariant
Hamiltonian H(k)
1
= H(k) and share the same
eigenvalue. If the band structure edges behave like
3
Figure 2(a), which has one Kramer pair and there are
gap-less bands, then it will satisfy the Kramer theo-
rem. But the gapped band structure in Figure 2(b)
is impossible (because bands are not continuous any
more) and violates the Kramers theorem. On the
other hand, both of the 2-Kramer-pair band struc-
tures like Figure 2(c) and 2(d) are allowable. So we
can deform the band structure from 4-degenerate(c)
to gapped structure(d).
Figure2: Illustration of Kramer pairs band. Red and
Blue denote opposite spins. Quoted from [8]
That is to say, the only way to transform the band
to gapped conguration is even-number Kramer pairs.
Now we have topologically dierent indexes to classify
the insulators: odd or even number of Kramer pairs,
i.e., Z
2
index. Thus for insulators whose number of
Kramer pairs is odd, there must be a gap-less cong-
uration on the edge, because the bandgap like Figure
2(b) will not happen. Nevertheless, for the insulators
whose number of Kramer pairs is even, it will account
for those ordinary insulators which have no gap-less
edge states. To get such index, Kane and Mele gave
a mathematical formalism [2]. They dened
P(k) = PF(u(k)||u(k)) (5)
In math, the determinant of a skew-symmetric ma-
trix can always be written as the square of a polyno-
mial in the matrix entries. This polynomial is called
the Pfaan of the matrix [10]. Then they dene the
topological index as
=
1
2i
_
c
dk
k
log[P(k) + i] (6)
,where integral route C is around the half of rst Brol-
louin zone. We call as Z
2
index. will evaluate the
winding number of phase of P(k) around the loop C,
or equivalently, the number of pairs of complex zero of
P(k), which will correspond to the number of Kramer
pairs. There are other ways to calculate the Z
2
index
[2][11][12]. For example,
=
1
2
_
_
(hBZ)
dkA
_
hBZ
d
2
kf
_
mod2 (7)
,which connect the Berry phase and topological index
again while the integration is over the half of the rst
Brillouin zone. For the crystal with inversion symme-
try, there is a shortcut to get the Z
2
index [12]. For
those time-reversal invariant point
i
in the rst Bril-
louin zone, we can dene
2m
(
i
) = 1 as the parity
eigenvalue of the 2mth occupied band at
i
, which
shares the same eigenvalue for Kramer partner. Then
dene

i
=
N

m=1

2m
(
i
) (8)
Then the Z
2
invariant = 0 or 1 can be dened as
(1)

i
(9)
QSHE ON GRAPHENE
Now we look at the QSHE on the Graphene. It was
rst pointed out by Kane and Mele [1]. In the sim-
ple picture, spin operator S
z
commutes with the spin-
orbit-interaction Hamiltonian, so the Hamiltonian de-
couples into two Hamiltonian for each spin. The re-
sult is just two copies of Haldane model [9]. The Hall
conductivity in this case is zero because the the di-
rections of charge currents are opposite for dierent
spins. But there is a quantized spin Hall conductiv-
ity
s
xy
by dening J

x
J

x
=
s
xy
E
y
. There are also
edge gap-less states for QSHE. The above description
is based on the conservation of spin S
z
. However, the
conservation of spin S
z
is not necessary for the robust
edge gap-less states. Kane and Mele [1] pointed out
that the edge states are protected by the Kramer de-
generacy as we mentioned above. Interestingly, the
QSH edge states make the up-spins propagate in one
direction but down-spins in the other and such phe-
nomena are termed helical.
QSHE ON QUANTUM WELL
To enhance the strength of spin-orbit interaction in
topological insulator, it is better to look for the heavy
elements. Bernevig, Hughes and Zhang (BHZ) consid-
ered the HgTe/CdTe quantum well structure [3]. For
both HgTe and CdTe, the important states near Fermi
level are those near point in the Brillouin zone. In
CdTe, the band structure is similar to semiconductors
with s-type conduction band and p-type valence band.
The separation between two bands are large (1.6 eV).
But in HgTe, due to the stronger spin-orbit interac-
tion, the p-like band is lower than s-like band with
separation 300 meV. There is something interesting
when HgTe is sandwiched by CdTe. If the thickness
4
of HgTe is larger than d
c
=6.3 nm, then two bands will
behave like what they should be in HgTe. That makes
bands inverted from CdTe to HgTe. If the thickness
of HgTe is less than 6.3 nm , there is no such inver-
sion. BHZ showed the inversion of the bands with
increasing thickness is a signal of the transformation
from ordinary insulator to topological insulator. The
proof could be easily done through (9). Because s-
band and p-band have dierent parities, the inversion
of two bands leads to (-1) to the value of R.H.S. of (9)
and Z
2
changes from 0 to 1.
Within a year of the BHZ proposal, the Wurzburg
group, led by Laurens Molenkamp, made the devices
and performed the experiment [4]. The experiment re-
sult is Figure (3). The experiment measured the resis-
tance of several samples. The black curve(Sample(i))
is a narrow(d < d
c
) quantum well, which has a high
resistance when Fermi energy is between the gap.
Sample(ii-iv) are wider quantum wells(d > d
c
). Sam-
ple(iii) and (iv) show the conductivity 2e
2
/h. The
length of (iii) and (iv) are the same (L= 1 m) but
dierent in w (0.5 and 1 m), indicating that the
edge current is in L direction. Sample(ii) with longer
L=20 m shows the nite temperature scattering ef-
fect. This experiment result showed the QSHE edge
current conductance and proved that the wider quan-
tum wells with inverted band are topological insula-
tors.
EXTENSION AND CONCLUSION
We mainly focus on the early development in this re-
view. The theoretical description here is called Topo-
logical band theory(TBT). TBT was extended to 3D
case by three dierent groups [12][13][14]. It turns out
there are 16 topologically distinct states for 3D rather
than only two for 2D. On the other hand, TBT is
only valid for noninteracting systems. QHZ[11] devel-
oped the topological eld theory and showed that
these QSH states are stable even under the strong
interactions. After the discovery of topological insu-
lators, the topologically classication was generalized
to superconductors and superuids [15][16][17][18]. So
topological insulators are not only fascinating in its
own eld but also stimulate the theoretical develop-
ment in other elds. There are a number of great
reviews, even written by the men who discovered the
topological insulators [7][19]. In our review, we give
a pedagogical introduction from the relation between
topology and band theory in QHE, then talking about
QSHE in graphene and HgTe/CgTe quantum well, -
nally showing the experimental observation of topo-
logical insulators. This review is for the course The-
ory of Solid in NTU physics. Here is my acknowl-
edgement to the instructor Pro.Ying-Jer Kao.
Figure3: The observation of QSHE. The longitu-
dinal 4-terminal resistance of several samples for
normal(d = 5.5nm < d
c
)(i) and inverted(d =
7.3nm > d
c
)(ii-iv) QW structure as a function of gate
voltage. They are measured for B=0 and T=30mk.
The up-left inset is the sample. The right inset
shows the comparison between T=30mk(green) and
T=1.8k(black) of sample(iii) on a linear scale. Quoted
from [4].
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