Long-range Coulomb interaction effects on the surface Dirac electron system of a three-dimensional topological insulator

Abstract

The surface state of a three-dimensional topological insulator forms a two-dimensional massless Dirac electron system. In Dirac electron systems, Coulomb interaction is not screened due to the small density of states at the Fermi energy and thus the long-range Coulomb interaction (LRCI) plays a crucial role. In this paper, we investigate the surface state with chemical potential $\mu=0$ in the presence of the LRCI using the Wilsonian renormalization group. We first check the Fermi velocity enhancement in the surface Dirac system, which also occurs in a usual Dirac electron system. The most remarkable feature of the surface Dirac system is that the Dirac Hamiltonian contains not pseudo spin but real spin Pauli matrices. Because of this feature, we find the g-factor enhancement, which is a unique property of the surface Dirac system. We also investigate the explicit form of the spin susceptibility and find that the spin susceptibility is enhanced in the presence of the LRCI.