Nonequilibrium spin transport on Au(111) surfaces

Abstract

The well-known experimentally observed \textit{sp}-derived Au(111) Shockley surface states with Rashba spin splitting are perfectly fit by an effective tight-binding model, considering a two-dimensional hexagonal lattice with $p_z$-orbital and nearest neighbor hopping only. The extracted realistic band parameters are then imported to perform the Landauer-Keldysh formalism to calculate nonequilibrium spin transport in a two-terminal setup sandwiching a Au(111) surface channel. Obtained results show strong spin density on the Au(111) surface and demonstrate (i) intrinsic spin-Hall effect, (ii) current-induced spin polarization, and (iii) Rashba spin precession, all of which have been experimentally observed in semiconductor heterostructures, but not in metallic surface states. We therefore urge experiments in the latter for these spin phenomena.

5 pages, 3 figures, to be published in Phys. Rev. B

References in corpus (5)

• Strong spin-orbit splitting on Bi surfaces
• Current induced electron spin polarization in strained semiconductors
• 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
• Current-induced spin polarization in spin-orbit-coupled two-dimensional electron systems