Spin-resolved Quantum Interference in Graphene

Abstract

The unusual electronic properties of single-layer graphene make it a promising material system for fundamental advances in physics, and an attractive platform for new device technologies. Graphene's spin transport properties are expected to be particularly interesting, with predictions for extremely long coherence times and intrinsic spin-polarized states at zero field. In order to test such predictions, it is necessary to measure the spin polarization of electrical currents in graphene. Here, we resolve spin transport directly from conductance features that are caused by quantum interference. These features split visibly in an in-plane magnetic field, similar to Zeeman splitting in atomic and quantum dot systems. The spin-polarized conductance features that are the subject of this work may, in the future, lead to the development of graphene devices incorporating interference-based spin filters.

12 pages, 4 figures, plus supplementary (11 pages, 9 figures)

References in corpus (10)

• Electric Field Effect in Atomically Thin Carbon Films
• The structure of suspended graphene sheets
• Atomic Structure of Graphene on SiO2
• Measurement of Scattering Rate and Minimum Conductivity in Graphene
• Cyclotron Resonance study of the electron and hole velocity in graphene monolayers
• Spin currents in rough graphene nanoribbons: Universal fluctuations and spin injection
• Ab initio GW many-body effects in graphene
• Graphene Spin Transistor
• Hyperfine Interactions in Graphene and Related Carbon Nanostructures
• Mesoscopic conductance fluctuations in graphene samples