Figure 1. Crystal and electronic structure of BiAg2.
(a) Top and side view of the crystal structure60. The combination of a strong surface potential gradient and a pronounced hybridization between Bi 6p- and Ag 5s-states gives rise to the orbital Rashba effect. (b) The hexagonal Brillouin zone and high-symmetry points. The tight-binding (c) and the first principles (d) band structures were calculated with and without taking into account spin-orbit coupling (SOC). States of distinct orbital symmetry are denoted as p−1, p0, and p+1 following the convention of the main text. The tight-binding parameters were chosen so as to closely reproduce the first principles bandstructure.