Crossover from gapped-to-gapless Dirac surface states in magnetic topological insulator MnBi2Te4

Abstract

Intrinsic magnetic topological insulators (MTIs) host exotic topological phases such as quantized anomalous Hall insulating phase, arising due to the large magnetic exchange gap. However, the interplay of magnetism and topology in these systems in different temperature regimes remains elusive. In this work, we present the logarithmic temperature-dependence of conductivity for sub-100 nm thick exfoliated flakes of MTI MnBi2Te4 in the presence of out-of-plane magnetic fields and extracted the linear slope, κ. We observed a characteristic change, in the low-temperature regime, indicating the gapped Dirac surface state according to Lu–Shen theory. We also report the recovery of topological properties in the system via the weak-antilocalization effect in the vicinity of antiferromagnetic to paramagnetic transition and in the paramagnetic regime. Hikami–Larkin–Nagaoka analysis suggested the presence of topological surface states. Therefore, our study helps in understanding how intrinsic magnetism masks topological properties in an MTI as long as magnetic ordering persists.