Excited electron and spin dynamics in topological insulator: A perspective from ab initio non-adiabatic molecular dynamics

Abstract

We perform an ab initio non-adiabatic molecular dynamics simulation to investigate the non-equilibrium spin and electron dynamics in a prototypical topological insulator (TI) Bi2Se3. Different from the ground state, we reveal that backscattering can happen in an oscillating manner between time-reversal pair topological surface states (TSSs) in the non-equilibrium dynamics. Analysis shows the phonon excitation induces orbital composition change by electron-phonon interaction, which further stimulates spin canting through spin-orbit coupling. The spin canting of time-reversal pair TSSs leads to the non-zero non-adiabatic coupling between them and then issues in backscattering. Both the spin canting and backscattering result in ultrafast spin relaxation with a timescale around 100 fs. This study provides critical insights into the non-equilibrium electron and spin dynamics in TI at the ab initio level and paves a way for the design of ultrafast spintronic materials.

Keywords

• Topological insulator
• Electron dynamics
• Spin dynamics
• Ab initio non-adiabatic molecular dynamics
• Spin-orbit coupling
• Electron-phonon coupling