Intrinsic Spin Hall Effect Induced by Quantum Phase Transition in HgCdTe Quantum Wells
arXiv:0711.1900 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.100.056602
Abstract
Spin Hall effect can be induced both by the extrinsic impurity scattering and by the intrinsic spin-orbit coupling in the electronic structure. The HgTe/CdTe quantum well has a quantum phase transition where the electronic structure changes from normal to inverted. We show that the intrinsic spin Hall effect of the conduction band vanishes on the normal side, while it is finite on the inverted side. This difference gives a direct mechanism to experimentally distinguish the intrinsic spin Hall effect from the extrinsic one.
4 pages, 4 figures
References in corpus (12)
- Quantum Spin Hall Effect and Topological Phase Transition in HgTe Quantum Wells
- Quantum Spin Hall Insulator State in HgTe Quantum Wells
- Dissipationless Quantum Spin Current at Room Temperature
- Spin current and polarization in impure 2D electron systems with spin-orbit coupling
- Theory of Spin Hall conductivity in n-doped GaAs
- Current-Induced Polarization and the Spin Hall Effect at Room Temperature
- Spin-Hall effect in a disordered 2D electron-system
- Generating Spin Currents in Semiconductors with the Spin Hall Effect
- Intrinsic Spin Hall Edges
- Universal spin-Hall conductance fluctuations in two dimensions
- Small-angle impurity scattering and the spin Hall conductivity in 2D systems
- Low field phase diagram of spin-Hall effect in the mesoscopic regime