Localized surfaces of three dimensional topological insulators

Understand

We study the surface of a three-dimensional spin chiral $\mathrm{Z}_2$ topological insulator (class CII), demonstrating the possibility of its localization.

• This arises through an interplay of interaction and statistically-symmetric disorder, that confines the gapless fermionic degrees of freedom to a network of one-dimensional helical domain-walls that can be localized.
• We identify two distinct regimes of this gapless insulating phase, a `clogged' regime wherein the network localization is induced by its junctions between otherwise metallic helical domain-walls, and a `fully localized' regime of localized domain-walls.
• The experimental signatures of these regimes are also discussed.