Topological Anderson Insulator in Three Dimensions

Understand

Disorder, ubiquitously present in solids, is normally detrimental to the stability of ordered states of matter.

• In this letter we demonstrate that not only is the physics of a strong topological insulator robust to disorder but, remarkably, under certain conditions disorder can become fundamentally responsible for its existence.
• We show that disorder, when sufficiently strong, can transform an ordinary metal with strong spin-orbit coupling into a strong topological `Anderson' insulator, a new topological phase of quantum matter in three dimensions.