Spin texture of an irradiated warped topological insulator surface

Abstract

Topological insulator is a new state of matter which exhibits exotic surface electronic properties. Determining the spin texture of this class of material is of paramount importance for understanding its topological order and can lead to potential applications in spintronics. Here, we have investigated the nature of the surface state of the topological insulator with hexagonal warping subjected to an off-resonant circularly polarized light. The resulting electronic ground state exhibits a novel feature of spin texture breaking the conventional spin-momentum locking present on a topological insulator surface. The observed spin texture is shown to be a consequence of the symmetry group of the underlying crystal. The generalisation of our method to the other 2D graphene-like systems are straightforward. Our calculation charts a simple experimental route for a realisation of the non-trivial spin-textures.