title: The topological Anderson insulator phase in the Kane-Mele model.
abstract: It has been proposed that adding disorder to a topologically trivial mercury telluride/cadmium telluride (HgTe/CdTe) quantum well can induce a transition to a topologically nontrivial state. The resulting state was termed topological Anderson insulator and was found in computer simulations of the Bernevig-Hughes-Zhang model. Here, we show that the topological Anderson insulator is a more universal phenomenon and also appears in the Kane-Mele model of topological insulators on a honeycomb lattice. We numerically investigate the interplay of the relevant parameters, and establish the parameter range in which the topological Anderson insulator exists. A staggered sublattice potential turns out to be a necessary condition for the transition to the topological Anderson insulator. For weak enough disorder, a calculation based on the lowest-order Born approximation reproduces quantitatively the numerical data. Our results thus considerably increase the number of candidate materials for the topological Anderson insulator phase.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of Basel, Klingelbergstrasse 82, 4056 Basel, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Christoph P
authors.initials: CP
authors.lastname: Orth
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of Basel, Klingelbergstrasse 82, 4056 Basel, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Tibor
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Sekera
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of Basel, Klingelbergstrasse 82, 4056 Basel, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Christoph
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Bruder
authors.affiliation: Physics and Materials Science Research Unit, University of Luxembourg, L-1511 Luxembourg.
authors.forename: Thomas L
authors.initials: TL
authors.lastname: Schmidt