Spin–orbit coupling often causes fine structure splittings in atomic and molecular spectra and induces spin-forbidden transitions by breaking symmetry selection rules. Recently, it was found that the vibrational frequencies of molecular cations such as CH2XI + (X=Br, Cl) are also affected dramatically by this interaction. Hyperconjugative inter-halogen interaction was thought to play a part. In...

We analyze the spin-orbit coupling term in the nuclear energy density functional in terms of a zero-range NN-contact interaction and finite-range contributions from two-pion exchange. We show that the strength of the spin-orbit contact interaction as extracted from high-precision nucleon-nucleon potentials is in perfect agreement with that of phenomenological Skyrme forces employed in non-relat...

In this thesis, we were interested in the interplay between the spin-orbit coupling and electronic correlations in condensedmatter physics. The spin-orbit interaction has indeed been found to play a significant role in the properties of a growingvariety of materials, such as the topological band insulators or the iridium-based 5d-transition metal oxides. Particularly,strontium irida...

The topological insulating phase results from inversion of the band gap due to spin-orbit coupling at an odd number of time-reversal symmetric points. In Bi2Se3, this inversion occurs at the Γ point. For bulk Bi2Se3, we have analyzed the effect of arbitrary strain on the Γ point band gap using density functional theory. By computing the band structure both with and without spin-orbit interactio...

The magnetic dipole strength and energy-weighted strength distribution is calculated in 8 Be, as well as the separate orbit and spin parts. All ∆N =2 excitations over and above (and including) the configuration 0s 4 0p 4 are included. The interaction has a central, two-body spin-orbit and a tensor part. The energy-independent and energy-weighted orbital strength distribution is remarkably insen...

Spin field-effect transistors (SpinFETs) are promising candidates for future integrated microelectronic circuits. A SpinFET is composed of two ferromagnetic contacts (source and drain), which sandwich a semiconductor channel. Current modulation is achieved by electrically tuning the gate voltage dependent strength of the spin-orbit interaction in the semiconductor region. We investigated the pr...

YbMgGaO4, a structurally perfect two-dimensional triangular lattice with an odd number of electrons per unit cell and spin-orbit entangled effective spin-1/2 local moments for the Yb(3+) ions, is likely to experimentally realize the quantum spin liquid ground state. We report the first experimental characterization of single-crystal YbMgGaO4 samples. Because of the spin-orbit entanglement, the ...

In recent pioneer experiment, a strong spin-orbit coupling, with equal Rashba and Dresselhaus strengths, has been created in a trapped Bose-Einstein condensate. Moreover, many exotic superfluid phenomena induced by this strong spin-orbit coupling have been predicted. In this report, we show that this novel spin-orbit coupling has important applications in quantum metrology, such as spin squeezi...

We investigate the properties of ballistic fin-structured silicon spin field-effect transistors. The spin transistor suggested first by Datta and Das employs spin-orbit coupling to introduce the current modulation. The major contribution to the spin-orbit interaction in silicon films is of the Dresselhaus type due to the interface-induced inversion symmetry breaking. The subband structure in si...

The spin-orbit interaction was found to split the cyclotron resonance of heavy holes confined in high-mobility, compressively strained germanium quantum wells. The interference between coherent spin-split cyclotron resonances was tracked on picosecond time scales using terahertz time-domain spectroscopy. Analysis in the time domain, or using a time-frequency decomposition based on the Gabor-Mor...