The study of the energy structure of materials with a nontrivial topology, as well as their topological classifications when intersite Coulomb interactions (ICI) are taken into account, constitutes one of the main directions of the theory of condensed matter. The correctness of describing the ICI in topological insulators (TI) is of particular interest since in these materials there is an overlap of the initial valence band and the conduction band. To emphasize the importance of this circumstance it is sufficient to note that when conduction band overlaps with valence one the inclusion of ICI can radically change the structure of the ground state through the formation of an excitonic dielectric phase.  

In this work within framework of the BHZ+V model, which reflects the energy structure of the HgTe quantum well and for which ICI are taken into account the problem of the spectrum of bulk and edge states was solved.  It is shown that charge fluctuations lead to a qualitative renormalization of the TI energy structure: the Fermi spectrum consists of not only of the conduction and valence bands, but also of two fluctuation states bands (FSB). This spectrum is shown in the left panel of Fig.1.  

The energies of the edge states are located between the upper and lower FSB (right panel Fig.1). The dielectric gap is determined by the energy interval between the bottom of the FSB of conductions electrons and the top of the valence FSB.

Fig.1. Left panel bulk spectrum of Fermi excitations in TI when intersite Coulomb interactions are taken into account. The additional bands are due to charge fluctuations. Right panel – the dispositions of the spectrum of edge states. It is essential the energies of edge states are spaced between the fluctuation state bands.

V.V. Val’kov
JETP Letters 114, issue12 (2021)