Mechanism of gap opening in a triple-band Peierls system: in atomic wires on Si

Phys Rev Lett. 2004 Sep 3;93(10):106401. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.93.106401. Epub 2004 Aug 30.

Abstract

One dimensional (1D) metals are unstable at low temperature undergoing a metal-insulator transition coupled with a periodic lattice distortion, a Peierls transition. Angle-resolved photoemission study for the 1D metallic chains of In on Si(111), featuring a metal-insulator transition and triple metallic bands, clarifies in detail how the multiple band gaps are formed at low temperature. In addition to the gap opening for a half-filled ideal 1D band with a proper Fermi surface nesting, two other quasi-1D metallic bands are found to merge into a single band, opening a unique but k-dependent energy gap through an interband charge transfer. This result introduces a novel gap-opening mechanism for a multiband Peierls system where the interband interaction is important.