Designer meron lattice on the surface of a topological insulator

Abstract

We present a promising route to realize spontaneous magnetic order on the surface of a 3D topological insulator by applying a superlattice potential. The superlattice potential lowers the symmetry of the surface states and creates tunable van Hove singularities, which, when combined with strong spin-orbit coupling and Coulomb repulsion, give rise to a topological meron lattice spin texture. The periodicity of this designer meron lattice can be tuned by varying the periodicity of the superlattice potential. We employ Ginzburg-Landau theory to classify the different magnetic orders and show that the magnetic transition temperature reaches experimentally accessible values. Our work introduces another direction to realize exotic quantum order by engineering interacting Dirac electrons in a superlattice potential, with promising applications to spintronics.