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Cyclotron resonance in Kondo insulator

Yasuhiro Tada [email protected] Institute for Solid State Physics, University of Tokyo, Kashiwa 277-8581, Japan
Abstract

Motivated by the recent experimental observations of quantum oscillations in the Kondo insulators SmB6 and YbB12, we study magneto-optical conductivity of Kondo insulators. We show that there exist non-trivial cyclotron resonance peaks in a frequency domain below the hybridization gap as a result of the characteristic Landau level structure of the system. Furthermore, these low energy peaks are enhanced near the insulator-metal phase transition driven by an applied magnetic field and stable even at low temperatures. They are smoothly connected via Kondo effect to resonance peaks for unhybridized conduction and ff-electrons at high temperature. The non-trivial cyclotron resonance is a dynamical counterpart of quantum oscillations in static quantities, and through this intimate connection it will provide a useful insight for the latter.

I Introduction

Metals and insulators are distinguished by their low energy behaviors which are normally well characterized by existence or absence of a Fermi surface. Especially, their difference becomes significant under a magnetic field, where the Fermi surface is discretized into Landau levels and quantum oscillations can be seen as a direct consequence in metals, while such behaviors are absent in insulators according to the standard theories Shoenberg (1984). However, these canonical understandings of metals and insulators are challenged by the recent experimental observations of quantum oscillations in the Kondo insulators SmB6 and YbB12  Li et al. (2014); Tan et al. (2015); Xiang et al. (2018); Liu et al. (2018). Quantum oscillations are observed in the magnetization of SmB6  Li et al. (2014); Tan et al. (2015), and the system becomes metallic for very strong magnetic fields B100B\gtrsim 100T  Cooley et al. (1999); Chen et al. (2015); Shahrokhvand et al. (2017); Wolgast et al. (2017). In YbB12, quantum oscillations are found when B40B\sim 40Xiang et al. (2018); Liu et al. (2018), and a field-induced metallic phase is realized for B50B\gtrsim 50T  Sugiyama et al. (1988); Terashima et al. (2017, 2018). In this way, both of these materials show quantum oscillations inside the insulating phases and they are enhanced as the system approaches the insulator-metal phase transition point. In addition, SmB6 and YbB12 are candidates of topological Kondo insulators Dzero et al. (2010, 2016), and possible relations of their topological nature to the quantum oscillations attract great attention.

To understand these anomalous quantum oscillations, a number of theories have been proposed  Knolle and Cooper (2015); Zhang et al. (2016); Pal et al. (2016); Ram and Kumar (2017); Shen and Fu (2018); Grubinskas and Fritz (2018); Peters et al. (2019); Erten et al. (2016); Knolle and Cooper (2017a); Sodemann et al. (2018). Although theoretical understandings have not yet settled, it was demonstrated that quantum oscillations can be found not only in Kondo insulators but also in general insulators with band inversion, because Landau levels change their character between conduction-electron-like one and ff-electron-like one successively as the magnetic field increases Knolle and Cooper (2015); Zhang et al. (2016); Pal et al. (2016); Ram and Kumar (2017); Shen and Fu (2018); Grubinskas and Fritz (2018); Peters et al. (2019). This is a hallmark of the characteristic Landau level structure realized in a Kondo insulator which is totally different from that in a conventional semiconductor or a simple insulator without band inversion. Thus far, unusual Landau levels and anomalous properties under magnetic fields have been extensively studied in exotic semimetals such as graphene and topological materials  Castro Neto et al. (2009); Ando (2013); Armitage et al. (2018). Now band inverted insulators provide a new platform for physics under strong magnetic fields. In order to pin down the origin of the observed quantum oscillations and elucidate impacts of magnetic fields, it is desirable to clarify the Landau level structures and their physical consequences in detail. However, the previous theoretical studies focus only on static quantities, while a dynamical quantity may provide rich information for clarification of the unusual Landau level structures and also for a possible origin of the observed quantum oscillations.

In this study, we investigate cyclotron resonance in Kondo insulators for the first time. The cyclotron resonance can directly access a Landau level structure by frequency dependence of magneto-optical conductivity, where a resonance peak corresponds to a transition between different Landau levels. Historically, it was first developed mainly for semiconductors and later employed for studying semimetallic graphene with unusual Landau levels  Castro Neto et al. (2009); Sadowski et al. (2006); Jiang et al. (2007); Deacon et al. (2007); Shon and Ando (1998); Gusynin et al. (2007). Recently it was also applied to metals with strong correlations such as the candidate topological superconductor Sr2RuO4, Fe-based superconductor KFe2As2, and hidden order phase of the ff-electron material URu2Si2  Hill et al. (2000); Kimata et al. (2011); Tonegawa et al. (2012). Similarly to the quantum oscillations in static quantities, it has been naively expected that low energy cyclotron resonance can be obtained only for a system with conducting carriers, while a resonance peak could be seen only for an energy scale above a gap in insulators. Here, we demonstrate that there exist non-trivial cyclotron resonance peaks well below an activation gap in a Kondo insulator at low temperature. Furthermore, the low energy resonance peaks are enhanced near the insulator-metal quantum phase transition point. These anomalous behaviors are a direct consequence of the characteristic Landau level structures which are responsible also for quantum oscillations. This is a dynamical counterpart of quantum oscillations in static quantities, and through this intimate connection it will provide a clue for the mechanism of the latter.

II Model and calculations

II.1 Hamiltonian and its spectrum

We consider a simple model of a Kondo insulator composed of single orbital conduction electrons and ff-electrons with pseudo-spins in two dimensions  Knolle and Cooper (2015); Zhang et al. (2016); Pal et al. (2016); Ram and Kumar (2017); Shen and Fu (2018); Grubinskas and Fritz (2018); Peters et al. (2019); Erten et al. (2016); Knolle and Cooper (2017a); Sodemann et al. (2018). Effects of three dimensionality will be discussed later. Since our primary purpose is to clarify the cyclotron resonance in a general Kondo insulator, we consider both of a non-topological insulator and topological insulator on an equal footing. The Hamiltonian is H=d2xψ(𝒙)ψ(𝒙)H=\int d^{2}x\psi^{\dagger}(\mbox{\boldmath$x$}){\mathcal{H}}\psi(\mbox{\boldmath$x$}),

\displaystyle{\mathcal{H}} =(π22mc+gcμB2σzBv0+v1a𝝅𝝈tv0+v1a𝝅𝝈tπ22mf+ϵf0+gfμB2σzB),\displaystyle=\left(\begin{array}[]{cc}\frac{\pi^{2}}{2m_{c}}+\frac{g_{c}\mu_{B}}{2}\sigma_{z}B&v_{0}+v_{1}a\mbox{\boldmath$\pi$}\cdot\mbox{\boldmath$\sigma$}^{t}\\ v_{0}+v_{1}a\mbox{\boldmath$\pi$}\cdot\mbox{\boldmath$\sigma$}^{t}&-\frac{\pi^{2}}{2m_{f}}+\epsilon_{f0}+\frac{g_{f}\mu_{B}}{2}\sigma_{z}B\end{array}\right), (3)

where ψ(𝒙)=(ψc,ψc,ψf,ψf)\psi(\mbox{\boldmath$x$})=(\psi_{c\uparrow},\psi_{c\downarrow},\psi_{f\uparrow},\psi_{f\downarrow}) is the field operator for the conduction and ff-electrons. 𝝅=i+e𝑨\mbox{\boldmath$\pi$}=-i\hbar\nabla+e\mbox{\boldmath$A$} with the electric charge e<0-e<0 is the dynamical momentum and 𝑨A is a vector potential for a uniform magnetic field 𝑩=×𝑨=(0,0,B)\mbox{\boldmath$B$}=\nabla\times\mbox{\boldmath$A$}=(0,0,B) with B>0B>0. mc,mfm_{c},m_{f} are effective masses for the conduction electrons and ff-electrons respectively, and mcm_{c} is assumed to equal the bare electron mass m0m_{0} and mf=0.1mcm_{f}=0.1m_{c} for brevity. ϵf0\epsilon_{f0} is the ff-electron energy level, and v0,v1v_{0},v_{1} represent hybridization strength with a characteristic lattice length scale aa\sim few Å which is taken to be the length unit. The system is a topological Kondo insulator when v0=0,v10v_{0}=0,v_{1}\neq 0, while it is a non-topological one for v00,v1=0v_{0}\neq 0,v_{1}=0 Dzero et al. (2010, 2016). μB=e/2m0\mu_{B}=e\hbar/2m_{0} is the Bohr magneton and gg-factors are assumed to be gc=gf=2g_{c}=g_{f}=2 for simplicity. We use the energy unit t02/(2m0a2)t_{0}\equiv\hbar^{2}/(2m_{0}a^{2}), and set =1\hbar=1 and the Boltzmann constant kB=1k_{B}=1. We fix the model parameters as ϵf0=0.5t0\epsilon_{f0}=0.5t_{0}, and (v0,v1)=(0.05t0,0)(v_{0},v_{1})=(0.05t_{0},0) for a non-topological insulator and (v0,v1)=(0,0.05t0)(v_{0},v_{1})=(0,0.05t_{0}) for a topological insulator, where the activation gaps at zero magnetic field are Δ0=2v0=0.1t0\Delta_{0}=2v_{0}=0.1t_{0} and Δ1=ϵf02(4(v1a)2mcmf/(mc+mf))20.067t0\Delta_{1}=\sqrt{\epsilon_{f0}^{2}-(4(v_{1}a)^{2}m_{c}m_{f}/(m_{c}+m_{f}))^{2}}\simeq 0.067t_{0}, respectively. Although these parameters may be too large when considering the Kondo insulators SmB6 and YbB12, they will be renormalized by the strong Coulomb interactions between the ff-electrons as mfmf/z,v0,1zv0,1m_{f}\rightarrow m_{f}/z,v_{0,1}\rightarrow\sqrt{z}v_{0,1} with a renormalization factor z1z\ll 1. We have confirmed that our results are qualitatively unchanged when we use different parameter values.

It is straightforward to diagonalize the Hamiltonian (3). We expand the field operator as ψi(𝒙)=nkankiϕnk(𝒙)\psi_{i}(\mbox{\boldmath$x$})=\sum_{nk}a_{nki}\phi_{nk}(\mbox{\boldmath$x$}) (ii represents i=(c,)i=(c,\uparrow) etc.) by using the harmonic oscillator single-particle wave functions ϕnk\phi_{nk} with a Landau level nn and an index for degeneracy kk. anka_{nk} is the corresponding annihilation operator. For a system in the infinite cylinder geometry with the size Lx=,Ly<L_{x}=\infty,L_{y}<\infty, the lowest Landau level wave function is ϕ0k=1/πlBLyexp(iky(xklB2)2/2lB2)\phi_{0k}=1/\sqrt{\sqrt{\pi}l_{B}L_{y}}\exp(iky-(x-kl_{B}^{2})^{2}/2l_{B}^{2}) under the Landau gauge 𝑨=(0,Bx,0)\mbox{\boldmath$A$}=(0,Bx,0). They satisfy lBπ+ϕnk=n+1ϕn+1k,lBπϕnk=nϕn1kl_{B}\pi_{+}\phi_{nk}=\sqrt{n+1}\phi_{n+1k},l_{B}\pi_{-}\phi_{nk}=\sqrt{n}\phi_{n-1k}, where π±=(πx±iπy)/2\pi_{\pm}=(\pi_{x}\pm i\pi_{y})/\sqrt{2} and lB=1/eBl_{B}=1/\sqrt{eB} is the magnetic length. We suppress the index kk because it is not directly involved in the following discussions. The Hamiltonian n,ij{\mathcal{H}}_{n,ij} in the Landau level basis gives eigenvalues {εnm}m=14\{\varepsilon_{nm}\}_{m=1}^{4} and eigenvectors {un,im}m=14\{u_{n,im}\}_{m=1}^{4}Knolle and Cooper (2015); Zhang et al. (2016). The energy spectra for both the non-topological and topological cases are shown in Fig. 1. The gap closes at a critical value bc0.058b_{c}\simeq 0.058 with beB/(m0t0)=4πBa2/ϕ0b\equiv eB/(m_{0}t_{0})=4\pi Ba^{2}/\phi_{0} (ϕ0=h/e\phi_{0}=h/e is the magnetic flux quantum) for both (v0,v1)=(0.05t0,0),(v0,v1)=(0,0.05t0)(v_{0},v_{1})=(0.05t_{0},0),(v_{0},v_{1})=(0,0.05t_{0}) and the system becomes metallic for b>bcb>b_{c}, corresponding to a field induced metallic phase as seen in SmB6 and YbB12  Cooley et al. (1999); Chen et al. (2015); Shahrokhvand et al. (2017); Wolgast et al. (2017); Sugiyama et al. (1988); Terashima et al. (2017, 2018). For simplicity, we set the chemical potential so that it coincides with the energy where the gap closes, μ=0.454t0\mu=0.454t_{0} for the non-topological case and μ=0.45t0\mu=0.45t_{0} for the topological case, respectively. The Landau level structure is complicated, but roughly speaking, it is a combination of εcn=ωc(n+1/2)\varepsilon_{cn}=\omega_{c}(n+1/2) and εfn=ωf(n+1/2)+ϵf0\varepsilon_{fn}=-\omega_{f}(n+1/2)+\epsilon_{f0} with Zeeman shifts, and Landau levels change their characters between conduction-electron-like one and ff-electron-like one successively as bb increases. Because of the hybridization v0,1v_{0,1}, energy spacing between the neighboring Landau levels is not exactly ωc,ωf\omega_{c},\omega_{f} but can be in between them especially when the crossover in Landau level’s character takes place, which is responsible for quantum oscillations in static qunatities. We will see in the following that the magneto-optical conductivity can faithfully reflect these characteristic structures, providing rich information on the unusual Landau levels.

Refer to caption Refer to caption
Figure 1: Energy spectra of (a) the non-topological and (b) topological Kondo insulators. The dimensionless magnetic field is b=eB/(m0t0)=4πBa2/ϕ0b=eB/(m_{0}t_{0})=4\pi Ba^{2}/\phi_{0}. The different colors correspond to the four eigenvalues {εnm}m=14\{\varepsilon_{nm}\}_{m=1}^{4} for each Landau level nn.

II.2 Brief overview of dHvA effect

Before going to the discussion on cyclotron resonance, we first give a brief overview on the quantum oscillations of orbital magnetization at zero temperature (de Haas-van Alphen (dHvA) effect) to provide an intuitive insight of the characteristic Landau levels  Knolle and Cooper (2015). This will be helpful for understanding the intimate relationship between the quantum oscillations and cyclotron resonance discussed in the next section. In this section, we keep the Planck constant \hbar explicitely. For simplicity we ignore the Zeeman effect and consider mf,v00,v1=0m_{f}\rightarrow\infty,v_{0}\neq 0,v_{1}=0 (a similar discussion holds for the topological v0=0,v10v_{0}=0,v_{1}\neq 0 case). In this case, the energy spectrum is given by

εn±=12[εcn+ϵf0±(εcnϵf0)2+4v02],\displaystyle\varepsilon_{n\pm}=\frac{1}{2}[\varepsilon_{cn}+\epsilon_{f0}\pm\sqrt{(\varepsilon_{cn}-\epsilon_{f0})^{2}+4v_{0}^{2}}], (4)

where εcn=ωc(n+1/2)\varepsilon_{cn}=\hbar\omega_{c}(n+1/2). At zero temperature limit T0T\rightarrow 0, only the lower energies εn<μ\varepsilon_{n-}<\mu contribute to the ground state energy. In the limit of small hybridization v0ϵf0v_{0}\ll\epsilon_{f0}, it behaves as εnεnc(εcn2+4v02)/ϵf0\varepsilon_{n-}\simeq\varepsilon_{nc}-(\varepsilon_{cn}^{2}+4v_{0}^{2})/\epsilon_{f0} for BBnB\ll B_{n}, while εnϵf0(ϵf02+4v02)/εcn\varepsilon_{n-}\simeq\epsilon_{f0}-(\epsilon_{f0}^{2}+4v_{0}^{2})/\varepsilon_{cn} for BBnB\gg B_{n}, where BnB_{n} is the crossover scale between the conduction-electron-like character and ff-electron-like character defined by ωc(n+1/2)=ϵf0\hbar\omega_{c}(n+1/2)=\epsilon_{f0}, or equivalently Bn=mcϵf0/(e(n+1/2))B_{n}=m_{c}\epsilon_{f0}/(e\hbar(n+1/2)). To perform a simple analytical calculation, we introduce an approximation where εn\varepsilon_{n-} is replaced by

εn={εcn(BBn)ϵf0(B>Bn).\displaystyle\varepsilon_{n-}=\left\{\begin{array}[]{ll}\varepsilon_{cn}&(B\leq B_{n})\\ \epsilon_{f0}&(B>B_{n})\end{array}\right.. (7)

The schematic behavior of εn\varepsilon_{n-} is shown in Fig. 2.

Refer to caption
Figure 2: The approximte Landau level (LL) spectrum {εn}\{\varepsilon_{n-}\} (Eq. (7)) and the crossover fields {Bn}\{B_{n}\}. Only three Landau levels are shown for simplicity.

When the magnetic field is Bn+1<B<BnB_{n+1}<B<B_{n}, the ground state energy density is

u(B)\displaystyle u(B) =Dl=0nεl+u~\displaystyle=D\sum_{l=0}^{n}\varepsilon_{l-}+\tilde{u}
=Dωc2[n(n+1)+n+1]+u~,\displaystyle=D\frac{\hbar\omega_{c}}{2}[n(n+1)+n+1]+\tilde{u}, (8)

where D=2/(2πlB2)=eB/πD=2/(2\pi l_{B}^{2})=eB/\pi\hbar is the degeneracy per area including spin degrees of freedom and u~=Dl>nεl=Dl>nϵf0\tilde{u}=D\sum_{l>n}\varepsilon_{l-}=D\sum_{l>n}\epsilon_{f0} is the contribution from higher Landau levels n+1,n+2,n+1,n+2,\cdots with an appropriate regularization to avoid unphysical divergence. Similarly, the ground state energy density for Bn<B<Bn1B_{n}<B<B_{n-1} is

u(B)\displaystyle u(B) =Dωc2[(n1)n+n]+Dϵf0+u~,\displaystyle=D\frac{\hbar\omega_{c}}{2}[(n-1)n+n]+D\epsilon_{f0}+\tilde{u}, (9)

where the second term is the contribution from εn\varepsilon_{n-} and the functional form of u~\tilde{u} is the same as above. Correspondingly, the orbital magnetization M=u/BM=-\partial u/\partial B is given by

M(Bn+1<B<Bn)\displaystyle M(B_{n+1}<B<B_{n}) =eωcπ[n(n+1)+n+1]+M~,\displaystyle=-\frac{e\omega_{c}}{\pi}[n(n+1)+n+1]+\tilde{M}, (10)
M(Bn<B<Bn1)\displaystyle M(B_{n}<B<B_{n-1}) =eωcπ[(n1)n+n]eϵf0π+M~,\displaystyle=-\frac{e\omega_{c}}{\pi}[(n-1)n+n]-\frac{e\epsilon_{f0}}{\pi\hbar}+\tilde{M}, (11)

where M~(B)=u~/B\tilde{M}(B)=-\partial\tilde{u}/\partial B and does not have a singularity. From these expressions, we see that the magnetization jumps at B=BnB=B_{n} and oscillates with the period δ(1/B)=1/Bn1/Bn1=e/(mcϵf0)\delta(1/B)=1/B_{n}-1/B_{n-1}=e\hbar/(m_{c}\epsilon_{f0}) which is inversely proportional to the area of a Fermi surface cross section without hybridization when ϵf0μ\epsilon_{f0}\simeq\mu. The size of the jump gives the oscillation amplitude, δM(B=Bn)=M(Bn+0)M(Bn0)=eϵf0/(π)\delta M(B=B_{n})=M(B_{n}+0)-M(B_{n}-0)=e\epsilon_{f0}/(\pi\hbar). Note that the sharp discontinuity of M(B)M(B) is due to the approximation Eq. (7) where εn\varepsilon_{n-} is not differentiable at B=BnB=B_{n}, and M(B)M(B) is smooth for the original spectrum Eq. (4). Note also that the condition mfm_{f}\rightarrow\infty can be relaxed and the quantum oscillation can be described by a similar argument for mf<m_{f}<\infty.

From the above derivation of the oscillating magnetization M(B)M(B) where all the states below the chemical potential contribute, it is clear that the crossover of a Landau level character as a function of BB from conduction-electron-like one to ff-electron-like one is the most important key. This observation holds true also for the quantum oscillation for static transport (Shubnikov-de Haas effect) where an effective density of states thermally smeared around the chemical potential will play a central role Zhang et al. (2016). The smeared density of states oscillates also due to the crossover of the Landau level character as easily expected from Fig. 1 where a Landau level energy approaches the band edge and goes away from it as BB increases. Therefore, we conclude that the quantum oscillations in static quantities are essentially due to the Landau level crossover in the present model. Note that there are densely distributed Landau levels near the edges of upper/lower bands in Fig. 1, because energy level spacings becomes narrower when the slope of a Landau level energy changes around the crossover field strength. In the next section, we will see that this characteristic structure of the Landau levels leads to low energy cyclotron resonance, sharing essentially same origin with the quantum oscillations of static quantities. .

II.3 Cyclotron resonance

We calculate the magneto-optical conductivity for a circularly polarized light with frequency ω\omega  Mahan (2000),

Reσ+(ω)\displaystyle\textrm{Re}\sigma_{-+}(\omega) =1ω(ImK+R(ω)ImK+R(0)),\displaystyle=\frac{1}{\omega}\left(\textrm{Im}K_{-+}^{R}(\omega)-\textrm{Im}K_{-+}^{R}(0)\right), (12)
K+R(ω)\displaystyle K_{-+}^{R}(\omega) =iV𝑑tθ(t)[J(t),J+(0)]eiωt\displaystyle=\frac{-i}{V}\int dt\theta(t)\langle[J_{-}(t),J_{+}(0)]\rangle e^{i\omega t}
=nmmMn,mm+χn,mm+(ω),\displaystyle=\sum_{nmm^{\prime}}M^{-+}_{n,mm^{\prime}}\chi^{-+}_{n,mm^{\prime}}(\omega), (13)
χn,mm+(ω)\displaystyle\chi^{-+}_{n,mm^{\prime}}(\omega) =f(εn+1,m)f(εnm)ωεn+1,m+εnm+iγ,\displaystyle=\frac{f(\varepsilon_{n+1,m})-f(\varepsilon_{nm^{\prime}})}{\omega-\varepsilon_{n+1,m}+\varepsilon_{nm^{\prime}}+i\gamma}, (14)

where VV is the volume of the system and f(ε)=(e(εμ)/T+1)1f(\varepsilon)=(e^{(\varepsilon-\mu)/T}+1)^{-1}. Similarly, the conductivity for the opposite polarization σ+(ω)\sigma_{+-}(\omega) is given by the correlation function K+R(ω)=iV𝑑tθ(t)[J+(t),J(0)]eiωtK^{R}_{+-}(\omega)=\frac{-i}{V}\int dt\theta(t)\langle[J_{+}(t),J_{-}(0)]\rangle e^{i\omega t}, and satisfies Reσ+(ω)=Reσ+(ω)\textrm{Re}\sigma_{-+}(\omega)=\textrm{Re}\sigma_{+-}(-\omega). The current operators are given by J+=J=Jx+iJy=𝒥+n,ijan+1,ianjJ_{+}=J_{-}^{\dagger}=J_{x}+iJ_{y}=\sum{\mathcal{J}}_{+n,ij}a^{\dagger}_{n+1,i}a_{nj} with Jx,y=d2xψ/Ax,yψJ_{x,y}=\int d^{2}x\psi^{\dagger}\partial{\mathcal{H}}/\partial A_{x,y}\psi, and 𝒥n+=𝒥n{\mathcal{J}}_{n+}={\mathcal{J}}_{n-}^{\dagger} is defined by

𝒥n+\displaystyle{\mathcal{J}}_{n+} =2e(n+1mclB002v1a0nmclB0002v1an+1mflB0000nmflB).\displaystyle=-\sqrt{2}e\left(\begin{array}[]{cccc}\frac{\sqrt{n+1}}{m_{c}l_{B}}&0&0&\sqrt{2}v_{1}a\\ 0&\frac{\sqrt{n}}{m_{c}l_{B}}&0&0\\ 0&\sqrt{2}v_{1}a&-\frac{\sqrt{n+1}}{m_{f}l_{B}}&0\\ 0&0&0&-\frac{\sqrt{n}}{m_{f}l_{B}}\end{array}\right). (19)

The matrix MM is defined as Mn,mm+=tr[𝒥n𝒰n+1m𝒥n+𝒰nm]/(2πlB2)M_{n,mm^{\prime}}^{-+}=\textrm{tr}[{\mathcal{J}}_{n-}{\mathcal{U}}_{n+1m}{\mathcal{J}}_{n+}{\mathcal{U}}_{nm^{\prime}}]/(2\pi l_{B}^{2}) with (𝒰nm)ij=un,imun,jm({\mathcal{U}}_{nm})_{ij}=u_{n,im}u_{n,jm}^{\ast}. We fix the phenomenological broadening parameter γ=0.0005t0\gamma=0.0005t_{0} and results are essentially independent of γ\gamma.

Figure 3 shows the magneto-optical conductivity σ(ω)\sigma(\omega) at a low temperature T=0.007t0=0.07Δ0T=0.007t_{0}=0.07\Delta_{0} for the non-topological case and T=0.0047t00.07Δ1T=0.0047t_{0}\simeq 0.07\Delta_{1} for the topological case. The calculated cyclotron resonance is qualitatively similar for these two cases, although there are some quantitative differences.

Refer to caption Refer to caption
Figure 3: Real part of the magneto-optical conductivity (in arbitrary unit) for (a), (b) the non-topological insulator at T=0.007t0=0.07Δ0T=0.007t_{0}=0.07\Delta_{0} and (c), (d) the topological insulator at T=0.0047t00.07Δ1T=0.0047t_{0}\simeq 0.07\Delta_{1}. The magnetic field is b=0.020.33bcb=0.02\simeq 0.33b_{c} for (a), (c) and b=0.050.83bcb=0.05\simeq 0.83b_{c} for (b), (d). The red curve is Reσ+(ω)\sigma_{-+}(\omega) and the blue one is Reσ+(ω)\sigma_{+-}(\omega).

For the small magnetic field b=0.020.33bcb=0.02\simeq 0.33b_{c}, the conductivity is strongly suppressed and there are only small spectral weights in a low energy region below the activation gap ω<Δ0,1\omega<\Delta_{0,1}. At high energy, a series of large peaks are located for ωΔ0,1\omega\gtrsim\Delta_{0,1}. On the other hand, when the magnetic field is close to the critical value, b=0.050.83bcb=0.05\simeq 0.83b_{c}, σ(ω)\sigma(\omega) at low energy is enhanced and there exist clear peaks well below the gap Δ0,1\Delta_{0,1} even in the insulating states. More precisely, the low energy peaks are located in the region ωf=0.005t0ωωc=0.05t0\omega_{f}=0.005t_{0}\leq\omega\leq\omega_{c}=0.05t_{0} and will be called anomalous cyclotron resonance. The peak height is relatively larger in the topological case than in the non-topological case, and we conclude that existence of the anomalous peaks is a universal property of Kondo insulators with band inversion. Furthermore, we will see later that the anomalous cyclotron resonance shares common features in both non-topological and topological cases. Such anomalous low energy peaks are absent in non-band inverted insulators, but are made possible because of the characteristic Landau level structures in the Kondo insulators. As seen in Fig. 1, there are Landau levels densely distributed near the edges of the lowest positive energy band (εnm>μ\varepsilon_{nm}>\mu, shown in red) and the highest negative energy band (εnm<μ\varepsilon_{nm}<\mu, shown in blue), corresponding to the previously mentioned crossover in Landau level’s character. Transitions between the nn+1n\leftrightarrow n+1 Landau levels within each band edge in the same color are allowed at finite temperature, resulting in the low energy peaks in σ(ω)\sigma(\omega), while such band edge Landau levels are absent in a non-band inverted insulator. Therefore, these anomalous peaks are a direct consequence of the unusual Landau level structure, essentially sharing the common origin with quantum oscillations within the present model.

An observation of these peaks will strongly support the mechanism for quantum oscillations proposed in the previous theories Knolle and Cooper (2015); Zhang et al. (2016); Pal et al. (2016); Ram and Kumar (2017); Shen and Fu (2018); Grubinskas and Fritz (2018); Peters et al. (2019), and hence provide a clue for the origin of the experimentally observed quantum oscillations. If the magnetic field is increased further, b>bcb>b_{c}, so that the system is metallic, one can see that the low energy peaks are further enhanced, corresponding to heavy fermion formation in the metallic regime. For the Kondo insulators SmB6 and YbB12, the frequency of the light should be smaller than 121\sim 2 meV corresponding to their insulating gaps, and also in between ωf\omega_{f} and ωc\omega_{c} (they are ωf0.1\omega_{f}\sim 0.1 meV, ωc1\omega_{c}\sim 1 meV for example at B=10B=10 T in the present model). Besides, a large magnetic field B>10B>10 T would be required to observe the anomalous cyclotron resonance.

Next, we discuss temperature dependence of the conductivity. Figure 4 shows σ(ω)\sigma(\omega) for different temperatures at the magnetic field b=0.050.83bcb=0.05\simeq 0.83b_{c}.

Refer to caption Refer to caption
Figure 4: Real part of the magneto-optical conductivity (in arbitrary unit) for (a), (b) the non-topological insulator and (c), (d) the topological insulator at b0.83bcb\simeq 0.83b_{c}. Temperature is (a) T=0.05t0=0.5Δ0T=0.05t_{0}=0.5\Delta_{0}, (b) T=0.2t0=2Δ0T=0.2t_{0}=2\Delta_{0}, (c) T=0.034t00.5Δ1T=0.034t_{0}\simeq 0.5\Delta_{1}, and (d) T=0.13t02Δ1T=0.13t_{0}\simeq 2\Delta_{1}. The red curve is Reσ+(ω)\sigma_{-+}(\omega) and the blue one is Reσ+(ω)\sigma_{+-}(\omega).

At an intermediate temperature T=0.5Δ0,1T=0.5\Delta_{0,1}, the anomalous low energy peaks are now comparable to the high energy peaks. Similarly to the T=0.07Δ0,1T=0.07\Delta_{0,1} case, these low energy peaks in σ+(ω)\sigma_{-+}(\omega) are located in the region ωf=0.005t0ωωc=0.05t0\omega_{f}=0.005t_{0}\leq\omega\leq\omega_{c}=0.05t_{0}, while there is only one low energy peak at ωωf\omega\simeq\omega_{f} in σ+(ω)\sigma_{+-}(\omega). The low energy peaks become sharper at high temperature, T=2Δ0,1T=2\Delta_{0,1}, and there is basically a single peak at ω=ωc\omega=\omega_{c} in σ+(ω)\sigma_{-+}(\omega) and at ω=ωf\omega=\omega_{f} in σ+(ω)\sigma_{-+}(\omega). These two peaks at high temperature simply correspond to the unhybridized conduction electrons and ff-electrons, which are directly seen in Eq. (12); contributions from high energy states with large Landau level indices nn become dominant at very high temperature since their momenta π±n/lB\pi_{\pm}\sim\sqrt{n}/l_{B} are large, and hence one can neglect hybridization matrix elements v0,v1an/lBωcn,ωfnv_{0},v_{1}a\sqrt{n}/l_{B}\ll\omega_{c}n,\omega_{f}n in the Hamiltonian n{\mathcal{H}}_{n}. Then a straightforward calculation leads to σ+(ω0)ωc/(mc2T)δ(ωωc)\sigma_{-+}(\omega\geq 0)\propto\omega_{c}/(m_{c}^{2}T)\delta(\omega-\omega_{c}) and σ+(ω0)ωf/(mf2T)δ(ωωf)\sigma_{+-}(\omega\geq 0)\propto\omega_{f}/(m_{f}^{2}T)\delta(\omega-\omega_{f}) in the limit γ0\gamma\rightarrow 0. The conduction and ff-electrons form a hybridized state at low temperature for which energy levels are non-linear in the magnetic field BB and located in between the unhybridized conduction electron energy and ff-electron energy. This evolution of the system is a (non-interacting variant of) Kondo effect and it would be useful for studying evolution of temperature dependent electronic structures under magnetic fields where photoemission experiments Denlinger et al. ; Okawa et al. (2015) are generally difficult.

The temperature dependence is well characterized by low energy spectral weight of the conductivity,

W+=Ω1Ω2𝑑ωReσ+(ω).\displaystyle W_{-+}=\int_{\Omega_{1}}^{\Omega_{2}}d\omega\textrm{Re}\sigma_{-+}(\omega). (20)

We choose the cut off energy scales Ω1,2\Omega_{1,2} so that only the anomalous low energy peaks are taken into account; Ω1=0\Omega_{1}=0 and Ω2=ωc10γ\Omega_{2}=\omega_{c}-10\gamma for a given magnetic field. Although the precise value of W+W_{-+} depends on a choice of Ω1,2\Omega_{1,2}, contributions from unhybridized conduction and ff-electrons are suppressed with the present Ω1,2\Omega_{1,2}. Besides, only the transitions between states at Landau levels nn+1n\leftrightarrow n+1 with energies Ω1|εn+1,mεnm±γ|Ω2\Omega_{1}\lesssim|\varepsilon_{n+1,m}-\varepsilon_{nm^{\prime}}\pm\gamma|\lesssim\Omega_{2} contribute to W+W_{-+}. Figure 5 shows W+W_{-+} for several values of magnetic fields bb. We see that W+W_{-+} develops as temperature is reduced via the Kondo effect and it becomes maximum roughly around T0.3Δ0,1 - 0.4Δ0,1T\sim 0.3\Delta_{0,1}\textrm{ - }0.4\Delta_{0,1}. At low temperature, the weight behaves as W+(T)exp(Δ+/T)W_{-+}(T)\sim\exp(-\Delta_{-+}/T) with a gap Δ+\Delta_{-+} in the insulating regime. Δ+\Delta_{-+} corresponds to the minimum value of |εnmμ||\varepsilon_{nm}-\mu| for the given magnetic field, because the temperature factor of W+W_{-+} behaves as |f(εn+1,m)f(εnm)|e|εn+1,mμ|/T(1e|εn+1,mεnm|/T)|f(\varepsilon_{n+1,m})-f(\varepsilon_{nm^{\prime}})|\simeq e^{-|\varepsilon_{n+1,m}-\mu|/T}(1-e^{-|\varepsilon_{n+1,m}-\varepsilon_{nm^{\prime}}|/T}) e.g. for |εn+1,mμ|<|εnmμ||\varepsilon_{n+1,m}-\mu|<|\varepsilon_{nm^{\prime}}-\mu|. W+W_{-+} is enhanced as the magnetic field increases in both non-topological and topological Kondo insulators in a similar fashion, which again means that the enhancement is a universal property of the Kondo insulators with band inversion. In this way, the low energy peaks can become pronounced even in the insulating regime when the system is close to the insulator-metal transition point. The gap Δ+\Delta_{-+} becomes zero at the critical point b=bc0.058b=b_{c}\simeq 0.058. For larger magnetic fields b=0.06,0.07>bcb=0.06,0.07>b_{c} where the system is metallic, there exist resonance peaks in σ+(ω)\sigma_{-+}(\omega) in between ωfωωc\omega_{f}\leq\omega\leq\omega_{c} corresponding to heavy fermions and W+W_{-+} remains non-zero at T=0T=0.

Refer to caption Refer to caption
Figure 5: Temperature dependence of the low energy spectral weight W+W_{-+} in (a) the non-topological and (b) topological Kondo insulators. The magnetic fields are b=0.01,0.02,0.03,0.04,0.05,0.06,0.07b=0.01,0.02,0.03,0.04,0.05,0.06,0.07 from the bottom (black) to top (dark-orange). W+W_{-+} for b=0.01b=0.01 is much smaller than those for b0.02b\geq 0.02.

Our results for the clean non-interacting model imply that the anomalous low energy peaks corresponding to the characteristic Landau level structure are most clearly visible around an intermediate temperature regime (T0.3Δ0,1 - 0.4Δ0,1T\sim 0.3\Delta_{0,1}\textrm{ - }0.4\Delta_{0,1} in the above calculation). In real materials, however, sharp peaks will be smeared by disorder and interactions especially at temperature above Kondo temperature which is roughly TKΔ0,1T_{K}\sim\Delta_{0,1}  Appel and Overhauser (1978); Takada and Ando (1978); Ando et al. (1982); Asano and Ando (1998); Kanki and Yamada (1997), and sufficiently low temperature would be required for an experiment. At the same time, signal amplitudes would be reduced at low temperature, which is a common subtle issue also for observables where only states near the chemical potential contribute Pal et al. (2016); Knolle and Cooper (2017b). Nevertheless, quantum oscillations in static longitudinal transport have indeed been observed not only in YbB12 but also in band inverted insulating quantum wells at low temperature Xiang et al. (2018); Xiao et al. (2019); Han et al. (2019), and discussed theoretically Peters et al. (2019). Since cyclotron resonance can be observed at relatively high temperature in general, anomalous cyclotron resonance can be seen in some intermediate temperature range below Kondo temperature and provide a useful insight for the observed quantum oscillations.

Finally, we qualitatively discuss effects of three dimensionality for which the response function is σ(ω,qz)\sigma(\omega,q_{z}) for a light perpendicular to the xyxy-plane with an in-plane polarization. Since we are interested in the frequency range below the activation gap Δ0,1=O\Delta_{0,1}=O(meV) or even smaller due to the renormalization effect, wavelength of the light used in a cyclotron resonance experiment will be much longer than a quasi-particle mean free path. Such a long wavelength may be regarded as the qz0q_{z}\rightarrow 0 limit and a resonance peak position at ω=(εn+1,m(kz+qz)εnm(kz))\omega=(\varepsilon_{n+1,m}(k_{z}+q_{z})-\varepsilon_{nm^{\prime}}(k_{z})) remains almost unchanged from that for a two-dimensional system. Therefore, the qualitative behaviors discussed in the present study will still hold for three dimensions. In case of a topological Kondo insulator, there are Zeeman split surface states and they may give additional contributions to cyclotron resonance, but they would be subdominant for a thick sample. In a thin film, however, the surface mode contribution could be significant. A cyclotron resonance experiment with tilted field angles may provide useful information about the dimensionality of the carriers for the quantum oscillations. There is another additional contribution even in two-dimensions arising from electron spins, but it could be separated from cyclotron resonance because its magnitude is usually small and the characteristic energy scale is Zeeman energy which differs from a cyclotron frequency especially in an ff-electron system. The spin response under a magnetic field itself will contain important information on elecronic structures similarly to those at zero magnetic field  Fuhrman et al. (2015); Singh and Lee (2018).

III Summary

We have investigated cyclotron resonance in Kondo insulators. We found that there exist anomalous low energy resonance peaks in the magneto-optical conductivity well below the activation gap even at low temperature. The low energy peaks are enhanced near the insulator-metal phase transition driven by a strong magnetic field. This is a direct consequence of the characteristic Landau level structure and is a dynamical counterpart of quantum oscillations in static quantities, and also shares the same origin (i.e. crossover of the Landau level character). At temperatures sufficiently higher than the activation gap, there are essentially two peaks corresponding to the unhybridized conduction and ff-electrons, and these peaks develop to form the anomalous peaks at low temperature via the Kondo effect. Our results are qualitatively applicable not only to Kondo insulators but also to other band inverted insulators such as a quantum well  Knolle and Cooper (2017b); Xiao et al. (2019); Han et al. (2019).

Acknowldgement

We thank M. Oshikawa, Y. H. Matsuda, and R. Peters for valuable discussions. This work was supported by Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research No. JP17K14333 and KAKENHI on Innovative Areas “J-Physics” (No. JP18H04318).

Note added.— After the submission of the present manuscript, we became aware of a recent theoretical work on cyclotron resonance in correlated insulators  Rao and Sodemann (2019). We also found experimental reports of cyclotron resonance in InAs/GaSb heterostructures which discuss effects of the electron-hole hybridization  Vasilyev et al. (1999); Marlow et al. (1999); Petchsingh et al. (2004, 2007).

References