Mechanical measurement of equilibrium spin currents in the Rashba medium

Abstract

We demonstrate that an equilibrium spin current in a 2D electron gas with Rashba spin-orbit interaction (Rashba medium) results in a mechanical torque on a substrate near an edge of the medium. If the substrate is a cantilever, the mechanical torque displaces the free end of the cantilever. The effect can be enhanced and tuned by a magnetic field. Observation of this displacement would be an effective method to prove existence of equilibrium spin currents. The analysis of edges of the Rashba medium demonstrates the existence of localized edge states. They form a 1D continuum of states. This suggests a new type of quantum wire: spin-orbit quantum wire.

4 pages, 1 figure

References in corpus (10)

• Spintronics: Fundamentals and applications
• Feedback cooling of a cantilever's fundamental mode below 5 mK
• Spin polarization of electrons by non-magnetic heterostructures : basics of spin-optics
• Intrinsic Spin and Orbital-Angular-Momentum Hall Effect
• Spin-orbit coupling and spin transport
• Electron spin operation by electric fields: spin dynamics and spin injection
• Persistent spin current in a spin-orbit coupling/normal hybrid ring
• Spin Dynamics and Spin Transport
• Equilibrium spin currents in the Rashba medium
• Theory of Edge States in Systems with Rashba Spin-Orbit Coupling

Cited by in corpus (31)

• Spin currents and spin superfluidity
• Equilibrium spin currents: Non-Abelian gauge invariance and color diamagnetism in condensed matter
• Persistent spin current in nano-devices and definition of the spin current
• First-Principles Evaluation of the Dzyaloshinskii--Moriya Interaction
• Quantum dissipative Rashba spin ratchets
• Gauge symmetry breaking and topological quantization for the Pauli Hamiltonian
• Role of Berry curvature in the generation of spin currents in Rashba systems
• Edge accumulation and currents of moment in 2D topological insulators
• Equilibrium edge spin currents in two-dimensional electron systems with spin-orbit interaction
• Majorana-like localized spin density without bound states in topologically trivial spin-orbit coupled nanowires
• Magnetic field effects on a nanowire with inhomogeneous Rashba spin-orbit coupling: Spin properties at equilibrium
• Intrinsic spin Hall effect in systems with striped spin-orbit coupling
• Edge spin accumulation: spin Hall effect without bulk spin current
• A proposal for the measurement of Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit interaction strengths in a single sample
• Spin-orbit induced equilibrium spin currents in materials
• Direct and inverse superspin Hall effect in two-dimensional systems: Electrical detection of spin supercurrents
• Geometry and linearly polarized cavity photon effects on the charge and spin currents of spin-orbit interacting electrons in a quantum ring
• Spin polarization of electron current through a potential barrier in two-dimensional structures with spin-orbit interaction
• Impact of a circularly polarized cavity photon field on the charge and spin flow through an Aharonov-Casher ring
• Spin Current in Junctions composed of Multi-band Superconductors with a Spin-density Wave
• Rashba-induced transverse pure spin currents in a four-terminal quantum dot ring
• Detection of spin bias in four-terminal quantum-dot ring
• Out-of-plane equilibrium spin current in a quasi-two-dimensional electron gas under in-plane magnetic field
• Correspondence between bulk equilibrium spin-currents and edge spin accumulation in wires with spin-orbit coupling
• A microscopic formulation of dynamical spin injection in ferromagnetic-nonmagnetic heterostructures
• Maximum intrinsic spin-Hall conductivity in two-dimensional systems with k-linear spin-orbit interaction
• Magnus spin Hall and spin Nernst effects in gapped 2D Rashba systems
• Orbital currents in lattice multiorbital systems: Continuity equation, torques, and RKKY interaction
• The spin Hall effect
• Chiral Bloch states in single layer graphene with Rashba spin-orbit coupling: Spectrum and spin current density
• Torsion-induced Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction in helical magnets