TY - JOUR A1 - Kernreiter, T. A1 - Governale, M. A1 - Zülicke, U. A1 - Hankiewicz, E. M. T1 - Anomalous Spin Response and Virtual-Carrier-Mediated Magnetism in a Topological Insulator T2 - Physical Review X N2 - We present a comprehensive theoretical study of the static spin response in HgTe quantum wells, revealing distinctive behavior for the topologically nontrivial inverted structure. Most strikingly, the q=0 (long-wavelength) spin susceptibility of the undoped topological-insulator system is constant and equal to the value found for the gapless Dirac-like structure, whereas the same quantity shows the typical decrease with increasing band gap in the normal-insulator regime. We discuss ramifications for the ordering of localized magnetic moments present in the quantum well, both in the insulating and electron-doped situations. The spin response of edge states is also considered, and we extract effective Landé g factors for the bulk and edge electrons. The variety of counterintuitive spin-response properties revealed in our study arises from the system’s versatility in accessing situations where the charge-carrier dynamics can be governed by ordinary Schrödinger-type physics; it mimics the behavior of chiral Dirac fermions or reflects the material’s symmetry-protected topological order. KW - spin response KW - magnetism KW - nanophysics KW - topological insulators Y1 - 2016 UR - https://opus.bibliothek.uni-wuerzburg.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/16658 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-166582 VL - 6 IS - 021010 ER -