Intrinsic spin-Hall accumulation in honeycomb lattices: Band structure effects

Abstract

Local spin and charge densities on a two-dimensional honeycomb lattice are calculated by the Landauer-Keldysh formalism (LKF). Through the empirical tight-binding method, we show how the realistic band structure can be brought into the LKF. Taking the Bi(111) surface, on which strong surface states and Rashba spin-orbit coupling are present [Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 046403 (2004)], as a numeric example, we show typical intrinsic spin-Hall accumulation (ISHA) patterns thereon. The Fermi-energy-dependence of the spin and charge transport in two-terminal nanostructure samples is subsequently analyzed. By changing E_{F}, we show that the ISHA pattern is nearly isotropic (free-electron-like) only when E_{F} is close to the band bottom, and is sensitive/insensitive to E_{F} for the low/high bias regime with such E_{F}. With E_{F} far from the band bottom, band structure effects thus enter the ISHA patterns and the transport direction becomes significant.

4 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (7)

• Direct electronic measurement of the spin Hall effect
• Strong spin-orbit splitting on Bi surfaces
• Quantum Spin Hall Effect and Enhanced Magnetic Response by Spin-Orbit Coupling
• Current-Induced Polarization and the Spin Hall Effect at Room Temperature
• Can Non-Equilibrium Spin Hall Accumulation be Induced in Ballistic Nanostructures?
• Imaging mesoscopic spin Hall flow: Spatial distribution of local spin currents and spin densities in and out of multiterminal spin-orbit coupled semiconductor nanostructures
• Local spin density in two-dimensional electron gas with hexagonal boundary

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• Current-induced spin polarization in spin-orbit-coupled two-dimensional electron systems
• Spin-Hall Effect in A Symmetric Quantum Wells by A Random Rashba Field