Quasiparticle Interference on the Surface of the Topological Insulator Bi$_2$Te$_3$

Wei-Cheng Lee, Congjun Wu, Daniel P. Arovas, Shou-Cheng Zhang

Published 2009-10-09, updated 2010-01-14Version 4

The quasiparticle interference of the spectroscopic imaging scanning tunneling microscopy has been investigated for the surface states of the large gap topological insulator Bi$_2$Te$_3$ through the T-matrix formalism. Both the scalar potential scattering and the spin-orbit scattering on the warped hexagonal isoenergy contour are considered. While backscatterings are forbidden by time-reversal symmetry, other scatterings are allowed and exhibit strong dependence on the spin configurations of the eigenfunctions at k points over the isoenergy contour. The characteristic scattering wavevectors found in our analysis agree well with recent experiment results.