1207.2198 (O. Viyuela et al.)

Out-of-Equilibrium Thermal Effects in a 1D Topological Insulator    [PDF]

O. Viyuela, A. Rivas, M. A. Martin-Delgado

We have studied the dynamical thermal stability of a one-dimensional topological insulator (TI) by deriving a master equation describing the coupling of the TI-fermionic degrees of freedom to bosons in thermal baths at a given temperature. Unlike Hamiltonian perturbations or disorder effects, we find that the topological edge states are destroyed by thermal effects regardless the gap size of the TI and for sufficient large times. Lifetimes for topological edge states are computed for physical implementations. Moreover, the non-equilibrium thermal evolution is able to distinguish topological and non-topological insulators.

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1207.2198