Tuning the Spin Hall Effect in a Two-Dimensional Electron Gas

Abstract

We provide a theoretical framework for the electric field control of the electron spin in systems with diffusive electron motion. The approach is valid in the experimentally important case where both intrinsic and extrinsic spin-orbit interaction in a two-dimensional electron gas are present simultaneously. Surprisingly, even when the extrinsic mechanism is the dominant driving force for spin Hall currents, the amplitude of the spin Hall conductivity may be considerably tuned by varying the intrinsic spin-orbit coupling via a gate voltage. Furthermore we provide an explanation of the experimentally observed out-of-plane spin polarization in a (110) GaAs quantum well.

References in corpus (5)

• Dissipationless Quantum Spin Current at Room Temperature
• Emergence of the persistent spin helix in semiconductor quantum wells
• Spin current and polarization in impure 2D electron systems with spin-orbit coupling
• Theory of Spin Hall conductivity in n-doped GaAs
• Spin-Hall effect in a disordered 2D electron-system