title: Robustness of Rashba and Dirac Fermions against Strong Disorder.
abstract: By addressing the interplay between substitutional disorder and spin-orbit-coupling in chalcogenide alloys, we predict a strong robustness of spectral features at the Fermi energy. Indeed, supplementing our state of the art first-principles calculations with modeling analysis, we show that the disorder self-energy is vanishingly small close to the band gap, thus i) allowing for bulk Rashba-like spin splitting to be observed in ferroelectric alloys by means of Angle Resolved PhotoEmission Spectroscopy, and ii) protecting the band-character inversion related to the topological transition in recently discovered Topological Crystalline Insulators. Such a protection against strong disorder, which we demonstrate to be general for three dimensional Dirac systems, has potential and valuable implications for novel technologies, as spintronics and/or spinorbitronics.
authors.affiliation: 1] Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR-SPIN), Via Vetoio, L'Aquila, Italy [2] Department of Physical and Chemical Sciences, University of L'Aquila, Via Vetoio 10, I-67010 L'Aquila, Italy.
authors.forename: Domenico
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Di Sante
authors.affiliation: Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR-SPIN), Via Vetoio, L'Aquila, Italy.
authors.forename: Paolo
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Barone
authors.affiliation: Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR-SPIN), Via Vetoio, L'Aquila, Italy.
authors.forename: Evgeny
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Plekhanov
authors.affiliation: 1] Department of Physical and Chemical Sciences, University of L'Aquila, Via Vetoio 10, I-67010 L'Aquila, Italy [2] Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR-ISC), Via dei Taurini, Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: Sergio
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ciuchi
authors.affiliation: Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR-SPIN), Via Vetoio, L'Aquila, Italy.
authors.forename: Silvia
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Picozzi