nLab quantum spin Hall effect

Contents

Contents

Idea

A quantum spin Hall effect, is

  1. a variant of the spin Hall effect where quantum effetcs play a role;

  2. a variant of the quantum Hall effect where spin-orbit coupling in the underlying material (typically a topological insulator) takes the role of the external magnetic field.

The fact that no external field is needed in a quantum spin Hall effect make the materials that exhibit this effect (e.g. certain topological insulators) be attractive substrates for operating on the corresponding anyon-excitations. This makes the quantum spin Hall materials potential hardware for topological quantum computation.

References

The original proposal/prediction of a quantum spin Hall effect:

in graphene:

in topological insulators based on mercury telluride (“HgTe quantum wells”):

Experimental detection:

  • Markus König, Steffen Wiedmann, Christoph Brüne, Andreas Roth, Hartmut Buhmann, Quantum Spin Hall Insulator State in HgTe Quantum Wells, Science 02 Nov 2007, Vol. 318, Issue 5851, pp. 766-770 (doi:10.1126/science.1148047)

Review:

Last revised on February 18, 2021 at 12:00:53. See the history of this page for a list of all contributions to it.