Ferroelectric polarization controlled orbital Hall conductivity in a higher-order topological insulator: \textit{d1T}-phase monolayer MoS$_2$

Abstract

The higher-order topological insulator is an extended concept of the conventional topological insulator, which obeys the generalization of the standard bulk-boundary correspondence. In our paper, we predict the monolayer \textit{d1T}-phase transition metal dichalcogenide MoS$_2$ to be a higher-order topological insulator, while also possessing intriguing ferroelectric characteristics. We explicitly demonstrate the nontrivial topological index and reveal the hallmark corner states with quantized fractional charge within the bulk band gap. Second, we show the existence of a nonzero orbital Hall conductivity plateau within the energy gap which is a signature to identify higher-order topology system. Additionally, we investigate the relationship between the ferroelectricity and the orbital Hall conductivity of \textit{d1T} MoS$_2$ and find that the direction of ferroelectric polarization can modulate the positive and negative values of the orbital Hall conductivity $σ_{\rm{OH}}^x$. Our findings provide the theory and material candidate for ferroelectricity tunable orbital Hall effect which is promising to realize the external electric field controllable orbitronics.