Experimental Evidence of Topological Surface States in Mg_3Bi_2 Films Grown by Molecular Beam Epitaxy

Nodal line semimetal(NLS) is a new quantum state hosting one-dimensional closed loops formed by the crossing of two bands. The so-called type-Ⅱ NLS means that these two crossing bands have the same sign in their slopes along the radial direction of the loop, which requires that the crossing bands are either right-tilted or left-tilted at the same time. According to the theoretical prediction, Mg_3Bi_2 is an ideal candidate for studying the type-Ⅱ NLS by tuning its spin-orbit coupling(SOC). High-quality Mg3 Bi2 films are grown by molecular beam epitaxy(MBE). By in-situ angle resolved photoemission spectroscopy(ARPES), a pair of surface resonance bands around the■ point are clearly seen. This shows that Mg_3Bi_2 films grown by MBE are Mg(1)-terminated by comparing the ARPES spectra with the first principles calculations results. Moreover, the temperature dependent weak anti-localization effect in Mg_3Bi_2 films is observed under magneto-transport measurements, which shows clear two-dimensional(2 D) e-e scattering characteristics by fitting with the Hikami–Larkin–Nagaoka model. Therefore, by combining with ARPES, magneto-transport measurements and the first principles calculations, this work proves that Mg_3Bi_2 is a semimetal with topological surface states. This paves the way for Mg_3Bi_2 to be used as an ideal material platform to study the exotic features of type-Ⅱ nodal line semimetals and the topological phase transition by tuning its SOC.     

Soliton mode-locked fiber laser with high-quality MBE-grown Bi_2Se_3 film

In this work, a soliton mode-locked erbium-doped fiber laser(EDFL) with a high-quality molecular beam epitaxy(MBE)-grown topological insulator(TI) Bi_2Se_3 saturable absorber(SA) is reported. To fabricate the SA device, a 16-layer Bi_2Se_3 film was grown successfully on a 100 μm thick SiO_2 substrate and sandwiched directly between two fiber ferrules. The TI-SA had a saturable absorption of 1.12% and a saturable influence of 160 MW/cm~2.After inserting the TI-SA into the unidirectional ring-cavity EDFL, self-starting mode-locked soliton pulse trains were obtained at a fundamental repetition rate of 19.352 MHz. The output central wavelength, pulse energy,pulse duration, and signal to noise ratio of the radio frequency spectrum were 1530 nm,18.5 p J, 1.08 ps, and 60d Bm, respectively. These results demonstrate that the MBE technique could provide a controllable and repeatable method for the fabrication of identical high-quality TI-SAs, which is critically important for ultra-fast pulse generation.