We study nanowires with proximity-induced s-wave superconducting pairing in an external magnetic field that rotates along the wire. Such a system is equivalent to nanowires with Rashba-type spin-orbit coupling, with strength proportional to the derivative of the field angle. For realistic parameters, we demonstrate that a set of permanent magnets can bring a nearby nanowire into the topological...

Farzad Mahfouzi,1 Jaroslav Fabian,2 Naoto Nagaosa,3,4 and Branislav K. Nikolić1,3,* 1Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware 19716-2570, USA 2Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Regensburg, D-93040 Regensburg, Germany 3Cross-Correlated Materials Research Group (CMRG) and Correlated Electron Research Group (CERG), RIKEN-ASI, Wako, Saitama 351-01...

– We study spin precession due to Rashba spin splitting of electrons and holes in semiconductor quantum wells. Based on a simple analytical expression that we derive for the current modulation in a broad class of experimental situations of ferromagnet/nonmagnetic semiconductor/ferromagnet hybrid structures, we conclude that the Datta-Das spin transistor (i) is feasible with holes and (ii) its f...

We theoretically explore a Rashba spin-orbit coupling scheme which operates entirely in the absolute ground state manifold of an alkali atom, thereby minimizing all inelastic processes. An energy gap between ground eigenstates of the proposed coupling can be continuously opened or closed by modifying laser polarizations. Our technique uses far-detuned 'Raman' laser coupling to create the Rashba...

We investigate spin transport of heavy holes in III-V semiconductor quantum wells in the presence of spin-orbit coupling of the Rashba type due to structure-inversion asymmetry. Similarly to the case of electrons, the longitudinal spin conductivity vanishes, whereas the off-diagonal elements of the spin-conductivity tensor are finite giving rise to an intrinsic spin-Hall effect. For a clean sys...

The spin-orbit interaction (SOI) of a two-dimensional hole gas in the inversion symmetric semiconductor Ge is studied in a strained-Ge/SiGe quantum well structure. We observe weak antilocalization (WAL) in the magnetoconductivity measurement, revealing that the WAL feature can be fully described by the k-cubic Rashba SOI theory. Furthermore, we demonstrate electric field control of the Rashba S...

We present calculations of the g factors for the lower conductance steps of three-dimensional hole quantum wires. Our results prove that the anisotropy with magnetic field orientation, relative to the wire, originates in the Rashba spin-orbit coupling. We also analyze the relevance of the deformation, as the wire evolves from three-dimensional toward a flat two-dimensional geometry. For high en...