Low-energy effective Hamiltonian and end states of an inverted HgTe nanowire

Abstract

The band inversion transition in a cylindrical HgTe nanowire is inducible via varying the nanowire radius. Here we derive the low-energy effective Hamiltonian describing the band structure of the HgTe nanowire close to the fundamental band gap. Because both the $E_{1}$ and $H_{1}$ subbands have quadratic dependence on $k_{z}$ when the gap closes, we need to consider at least three subbands, i.e., the $E_{1}$, $H_{1}$, and $H_{2}$ subbands, in building the effective Hamiltonian. The resulting effective Hamiltonian is block diagonal and each block is a $3\times3$ matrix. End states are found in the inverted regime when we solve the effective Hamiltonian with open boundary condition.