Spin-to-Charge Conversion of Mesoscopic Spin Currents

Abstract

Recent theoretical investigations have shown that spin currents can be generated by passing electric currents through spin-orbit coupled mesoscopic systems. Measuring these spin currents has however not been achieved to date. We show how mesoscopic spin currents in lateral heterostructures can be measured with a single-channel voltage probe. In the presence of a spin current, the charge current $I_{\mathrm{qpc}}$ through the quantum point contact connecting the probe is odd in an externally applied Zeeman field $B$, while it is even in the absence of spin current. Furthermore, the zero field derivative ${\partial }_B{I}_{\mathrm{qpc}}$ is proportional to the magnitude of the spin current, with a proportionality coefficient that can be determined in an independent measurement. We confirm these findings numerically.

4 pages, 3 figures; references added, a few minor changes

References in corpus (11)

• Single-shot read-out of an individual electron spin in a quantum dot
• Universal spin-Hall conductance fluctuations in two dimensions
• Aharonov-Bohm oscillations in the presence of strong spin-orbit interactions
• Electrical generation of pure spin currents in a two-dimensional electron gas
• Mesoscopic Spin Hall Effect
• Detection of current-induced spins by ferromagnetic contacts
• Spin polarized current generation from quantum dots without magnetic fields
• Tunable few electron quantum dots in InAs nanowires
• Spin Accumulation and Spin Relaxation in a Large Open Quantum Dot
• Geometric Correlations and Breakdown of Mesoscopic Universality in Spin Transport
• Mesoscopic fluctuations of spin currents

Cited by in corpus (10)

• Onsager Relations in Coupled Electric, Thermoelectric and Spin Transport: The Ten-Fold Way
• Generation and Detection of Spin Currents in Semiconductor Nanostructures with Strong Spin-Orbit Interaction
• Spin accumulation without spin current
• Spin transistor action from Onsager reciprocity and SU(2) gauge theory
• Spin-to-Charge Conversion in 2D Electron Gas and Single-layer Graphene Devices
• Full Counting Statistics of Spin-Flip/Conserving Charge Transitions in Pauli-Spin Blockade
• Non-linear spin to charge conversion in mesoscopic structures
• Spin Current in Junctions composed of Multi-band Superconductors with a Spin-density Wave
• Non-linear spin filter for non-magnetic materials at zero magnetic field
• Dipole-like dynamical nuclear spin polarization around a quantum point contact