On the electrical transport of weak topological insulators and Weyl semimetals

Abstract

Topological insulators have garnered enormous amount of attention owing to their unique topological properties. The surface states protected by the topology of the system hold limitless potentials including topological quantum computation. WTIs are one branch of this exotic field which is new to the family of the topological insulators. Initially, weak topological insulators (WTIs) are assumed to be a mere version of ordinary insulators recent reports claim the opposite. The WTIs are in fact much more robust than its counterpart strong topological insulators (STIs). Unfortunately, there are a few materials known to be as WTIs which implies the difficulty in finding this phase in real materials. Since WTIs are thought to be an adiabatic stack of 2D quantum spin Hall layers, many proposals came up with the idea of super lattice structures where a stack of a trivial insulator with a STI could possibly give rise to this most sought after phase. However many of them are still waiting to be experimentally verifi ed. In this regard, our work is a much relief that was needed. We have discovered a new WTI, which is easily cleavable. In this thesis, we are going to discuss about the newly discovered WTI, BiSe, more extensively