Plasmon mass and Drude weight in strongly spin-orbit-coupled 2D electron gases

Abstract

Spin-orbit-coupled two-dimensional electron gases (2DEGs) are a textbook example of helical Fermi liquids, i.e. quantum liquids in which spin (or pseudospin) and momentum degrees-of-freedom at the Fermi surface have a well-defined correlation. Here we study the long-wavelength plasmon dispersion and the Drude weight of archetypical spin-orbit-coupled 2DEGs. We first show that these measurable quantities are sensitive to electron-electron interactions due to broken Galileian invariance and then discuss in detail why the popular random phase approximation is not capable of describing the collective dynamics of these systems even at very long wavelengths. This work is focussed on presenting approximate microscopic calculations of these quantities based on the minimal theoretical scheme that captures the basic physics correctly, i.e. the time-dependent Hartree-Fock approximation. We find that interactions enhance the "plasmon mass" and suppress the Drude weight. Our findings can be tested by inelastic light scattering, electron energy loss, and far-infrared optical-absorption measurements.

18 pages, 11 figures, submitted

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• Dynamic current-current susceptibility in 3D Dirac and Weyl semimetals
• Plasmon modes of a massive Dirac plasma, and their superlattices
• Spin Susceptibility and Helical Magnetic Orders at the Edges/Surfaces of Topological Insulators Due to Fermi Surface Nesting
• Plasmons in spin polarized graphene: a new way to measure spin polarization
• Magnon-Plasmon Hybridization Mediated by Spin-Orbit Interaction in Magnetic Materials
• Tunable interband and intraband plasmons in twisted double bilayer graphene
• Intrinsic nonreciprocal bulk plasmons in noncentrosymmetric magnetic systems
• Collective spin modes in Fermi liquids with spin-orbit coupling
• Spin-orbit interaction enabled electronic Raman scattering from charge collective modes
• Coupled spin-charge dynamics in helical Fermi liquids beyond the random phase approximation
• Finite-frequency response of Rasba electron gas with two-particle scattering
• Large quantum nonreciprocity in plasmons dragged by drifting electrons
• Many-body correction to the intrinsic anomalous and spin Hall conductivities