paper

Non-Abelian hydrodynamics and the flow of spin in spin-orbit coupled substances

arXiv:0705.2953 · doi:10.1016/j.aop.2007.06.012

Abstract

Motivated by heavy ion collision experiments, we study the hydrodynamic properties of non-Abelian systems. These issues arise in condensed matter physics in the context of transport of spins in the presence of spin orbit coupling: the Pauli Hamiltonian governing the leading relativistic corrections in condensed matter systems can be rewritten in a language of SU(2) covariant derivatives, where the role of the non-Abelian gauge fields is taken by the physical electromagnetic fields. Taking a similar perspective as Jackiw and coworkers, we show that non-abelian hydrodynamical currents can be factored in a non-coherent 'classical' part, and a coherent part requiring macroscopic non-abelian quantum entanglement. Non-abelian flow being thus a much richer affair than familiar hydrodynamics, permits us to classify the various spin transport phenomena in in condensed matter physics in a unifying framework.In semiconductor spintronics, the absence of hydrodynamics is well known, but in our formulation it is directly associated with the fact that non-abelian currents are only covariantly conserved.We analyze the quantum mechanical single particle currents of relevance to mesoscopic transport with as highlight the Aharonov-Casher effect, where we demonstrate that the non-abelian transport structure renders it much more fragile than its abelian counterpart, the Aharonov-Bohm effect. We subsequently focus on spin flows protected by order parameters, of which the spin-spiral magnets and the spin superfluids are important examples. The surprising bonus is that the presence of an order parameter, being single-valued, restores hydrodynamics. We demonstrate a new effect: the trapping of electrical line charge, being the 'fixed frame' non-Abelian analogue of the familiar magnetic flux trapping by superconductors.

23 pages, 7 figures

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