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There is significant current interest in spintronic devices fashioned after a spin analog of the electro-optic modulator proposed by Datta and Das [Appl. Phys. Lett., 56, 665 (1990)]. In their modulator, the “modulation” of the spin polarized current is carried out by tuning the Rashba spin-orbit interaction with a gate voltage. Here, we propose an analogous modulator where the modulation is ca...

E. E. Krasovskii1,2,3,* and E. V. Chulkov1,2,4 1Departamento de Fı́sica de Materiales, Facultad de Ciencias Quı́micas, Universidad del Pais Vasco/Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea, Apartado 1072, ES-20080 San Sebastián/Donostia, Basque Country, Spain 2Donostia International Physics Center (DIPC), Paseo Manuel de Lardizabal 4, ES-20018 San Sebastián/Donostia, Basque Country, Spain 3IKERBASQUE, Basque ...

To fix the notation, let us start by giving some details on the helicity eigenstates basis. The helicity operator is defined as S = [p̂⇥ ~ ]z and its eigenstates, |ksi, with s = ±1, satisfy the relation S|k±i = ±|k±i. A simple calculation shows in particular that |k±i can be expressed in terms of the standard spin eigenstates, |k "i and |k #i, as |k±i = (exp ( i✓k)|k "i± i|k #i)/ p 2 with ✓k = a...

Electrons with spin-orbit coupling moving in mesoscopic structures can often exhibit local spin polarization. In this paper, we study the influence of the Rashba coupling on the scattering of two-dimensional electrons from a circular disk. It is observed that spin-polarized regions exist, even if the incident electrons are unpolarized. In addition to the distributions of charge and spin current...

We demonstrate that in an inversion-asymmetric two-dimensional electron system (2DES) with both Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit couplings taken into account, certain transport directions on which no spin precession occurs can be found when the injected spin is properly polarized. By analyzing the expectation value of spin with respect to the injected electron state on each space point in the ...

We study the effect of disorder on the intrinsic anomalous Hall (AH) conductivity in a spinpolarized two-dimensional electron gas with a Rashba-type spin-orbit interaction. We find that AH conductivity vanishes unless the lifetime is spin-dependent, similar to the spin Hall (SH) conductivity in the non-magnetic system. In addition, we find that the SH conductivity does not vanish in the presenc...

A theoretical study is presented for interactions between surface acoustic waves ~SAWs! and a two-dimensional electron gas ~2DEG! in the presence of spin-orbit ~SO! interaction ~SOI! induced by the Rashba effect. It is found that the presence of the SOI in a 2DEG can open up new channels for electronic transitions. As a result, an enhanced absorption of the SAWs by a 2DEG can be achieved throug...

We study the effect of disorder on the intrinsic anomalous Hall conductivity in a magnetic two-dimensional electron gas with a Rashba-type spin-orbit interaction. We find that anomalous Hall conductivity vanishes unless the lifetime is spin-dependent, similar to the spin Hall conductivity in the nonmagnetic system. In addition, we find that the spin Hall conductivity does not vanish in the pres...

We show that the joint effect of spin-orbit and magnetic fields leads to a spin polarization perpendicular to the plane of a homogeneous two-dimensional electron system with Rashba spin-orbit coupling and in-plane parallel dc magnetic and electric fields, for angle-dependent impurity scattering or nonparabolic energy spectrum, while only in-plane polarization persists for simplified models. We ...