Anomalous Edge Transport in the Quantum Anomalous Hall State
Abstract
We predict by first-principles calculations that thin films of Cr-doped (Bi,Sb)2Te3 magnetic topological insulator have gapless non-chiral edge states coexisting with the chiral edge state. Such gapless non-chiral states are not immune to backscattering, which would explain dissipative transport in the quantum anomalous Hall (QAH) state observed in this system experimentally. Here we study the edge transport with both chiral and non-chiral states by Landaur-B\"uttiker formalism, and find that the longitudinal resistance is nonzero whereas Hall resistance is quantized to h/e2. In particular, the longitudinal resistance can be greatly reduced by adding an extra floating probe even if it is not used, while the Hall resistance remains at the quantized value. We propose several transport experiments to detect the dissipative non-chiral edge channels. These results will facilitate the realization of pure dissipationless transport of QAH states in magnetic topological insulators.