Magnetic breakdown of cyclotron orbits in systems with Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling

Abstract

We study the effect of the interplay between the Rashba and the Dresselhaus spin-orbit couplings on the transverse electron focusing in two-dimensional electron gases. Depending on their relative magnitude, the presence of both couplings can result in the splitting of the first focusing peak into two or three. This splitting has information about the relative value of spin-orbit couplings and therefore about the shape of the Fermi surface. More interesting, the presence of the third peak is directly related to the tunneling probability ("magnetic breakdown") between orbits corresponding to the different sheets of the Fermi surface. In addition, destructive interference effects between paths that involve tunneling and those that do not can be observed in the second focusing condition. Such electron paths (orbits) could be experimentally detected using current techniques for imaging the electron flow opening the possibility to directly observe and characterize the magnetic breakdown effect in this system.

9 pages, 8 figures

References in corpus (20)

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• Detection of spin polarized currents in quantum point contacts via transverse electron focusing
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• Two-dimensional imaging of the spin-orbit effective magnetic field
• Exact Landau Levels in Two-Dimensional Electron Systems with Rashba and Dresselhaus Spin-Orbit Interactions in a Perpendicular Magnetic Field
• Imaging electrons in a magnetic field

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Normal-state nodal electronic structure in underdoped high-Tc copper oxides
• Nonlinear Spin-Charge Dynamics in a Driven Double Quantum Dot
• Spin polarisation and spin dependent scattering of holes in transverse magnetic focussing
• Imaging chiral Andreev reflection in the presence of Rashba spin-orbit coupling