Nature of the Dirac gap modulation and surface magnetic interaction in axion antiferromagnetic topological insulator MnBi2Te4A

Modification of the gap at the Dirac point (DP) in axion antiferromagnetic topological insulator MnBi2Te4 and its electronic and spin structure have been studied by angle- and spin-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) under laser excitation at various temperatures (9-35 K), light polarizations and photon energies. We have distinguished both large (60-70 meV) and reduced (< 20 meV) gaps at the DP in the ARPES dispersions, which remain open above the Neel temperature (T-N = 24.5 K). We propose that the gap above T-N remains open due to a short-range magnetic field generated by chiral spin fluctuations. Spin-resolved ARPES, XMCD and circular dichroism ARPES measurements show a surface ferromagnetic ordering for the "large gap" sample and apparently significantly reduced effective magnetic moment for the "reduced gap" sample. These observations can be explained by a shift of the Dirac cone (DC) state localization towards the second Mn layer due to structural disturbance and surface relaxation effects, where DC state is influenced by compensated opposite magnetic moments. As we have shown by means of ab-initio calculations surface structural modification can result in a significant modulation of the DP gap.The authors acknowledge support by the Saint Petersburg State University (Grant No. 51126254), Russian Science Foundation (Grant No. 18-12-00062 in part of the photoemission measurements and Grant No. 18-12-00169 in part of the electronic band structure calculations) and by Russian Foundation of Basic Researches (Grants Nos. 18-52-06009 and 20-32-70179) and Science Development Foundation under the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan (Grant No. EI F-BGM-4-RFTF1/2017-21/04/1-M-02). A. Kimura was financially supported by KAKENHI (Grants No. 17H06138, No. 17H06152, and No. 18H03683). S.V.E. and E.V.C. acknowledge support by the Fundamental Research Program of the State Academies of Sciences (line of research III.23.2.9). The authors kindly acknowledge the HiSOR staff and A. Harasawa at ISSP for technical support and help with the experiment. The ARPES measurements at HiSOR were performed with the approval of the Proposal Assessing Committee (Proposal Numbers: 18BG027 and 19AG048). XAS and XMCD measurements were performed at BL23SU of SPring-8 (Proposal Nos. 2018A3842 and 2018B3842) under the Shared Use Program of JAEA Facilities (Proposal Nos. 2018A-E25 and 2018B-E24) with the approval of Nanotechnology Platform project supported by MEXT, Japan (Proposal Nos. A-18-AE-0020 and A-18-AE-0042). M. M. Otrokov acknowledges the support by Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion (Grant no. PID2019-103910GB-I00). K. Yaji was financially supported by KAKENHI (Grants No. 18K03484)