Spin-dependent electron-impurity scattering in two-dimensional electron systems

Abstract

We present a theoretical study of elastic spin-dependent electron scattering caused by a charged impurity in the vicinity of a two-dimensional electron gas. We find that the symmetry properties of the spin-dependent differential scattering cross section are different for an impurity located in the plane of the electron gas and for one at a finite distance from the plane. We show that in the latter case asymmetric (`skew') scattering can arise if the polarization of the incident electron has a finite projection on the plane spanned by the normal vector of the two-dimensional electron gas and the initial propagation direction. In specially preparated samples this scattering mechanism may give rise to a Hall-like effect in the presence of an in-plane magnetic field.

4.1 pages, 2 figures

References in corpus (6)

• Anomalous Hall effect in ferromagnetic semiconductors
• Large Anomalous Hall effect in a silicon-based magnetic semiconductor
• Anomalous Hall effect in (In,Mn)Sb dilute magnetic semiconductor
• A Tunable Anomalous Hall Effect in a Non-Ferromagnetic System
• Two-dimensional electron scattering in regions of nonuniform spin-orbit coupling
• Skew scattering due to intrinsic spin-orbit coupling in a two-dimensional electron gas