Electrically Controlled Pumping of Spin Currents in Topological Insulators

Abstract

Pure spin currents are shown to be generated by an electrically controlled quantum pump applied at the edges of a topological insulator. The electric rather than the more conventional magnetic control offers several advantages and avoids, in particular, the necessity of delicate control of magnetization dynamics over tiny regions. The pump is implemented by pinching the sample at two quantum point contacts and phase modulating two external gate voltages between them. The spin current is generated for the full range of parameters. On the other hand, pumping via amplitude modulation of the inter-boundary couplings generates both charge and spin currents, with a pure charge current appearing only for special values of the parameters for which the Bohm-Aharonov flux takes integer values. Our setup can therefore serve to fingerprint the helical nature of the edges states with the zeros of the pumped spin and charge currents occurring at distinct universal locations where the Fabry-Perot or the Aharonov-Bohm phases take integer values.

5 pages, 5figures

References in corpus (12)

• Quantum Spin Hall Effect and Topological Phase Transition in HgTe Quantum Wells
• Quantum Spin Hall Insulator State in HgTe Quantum Wells
• Topological Field Theory of Time-Reversal Invariant Insulators
• Dissipationless Quantum Spin Current at Room Temperature
• The Quantum Spin Hall Effect: Theory and Experiment
• Single-parameter non-adiabatic quantized charge pumping
• Corner Junction as a Probe of Helical Edge States
• Full electrical control of Charge and Spin conductance through Interferometry of Edge States in Topological Insulators
• Microwave-driven ferromagnet--topological-insulator heterostructures: The prospect for giant spin battery effect and quantized charge pump devices
• Adiabatic spin pumping through a quantum dot with a single orbital level
• Pumping in a mesoscopic ring with Ahronov-Casher effect
• Adiabatic pumping through a quantum dot in the Kondo regime: Exact results at the Toulouse limit

Cited by in corpus (35)

• Quantum transport in Rashba spin-orbit materials: A review
• Spin pumping and measurement of spin currents in optical superlattices
• Tunneling between helical edge states through extended contacts
• Nonlocal Thermoelectricity in a S-TI-S Junction in Contact with a N-Metal Probe: Evidence for Helical Edge States
• Electrical switching and interferometry of massive Dirac particles in topological insulators constrictions
• Devices with electrically tunable topological insulating phases
• Proposal for an on-demand source of polarized electrons into the edges of a topological insulator
• Spin-thermoelectric transport induced by interactions and spin-flip processes in two dimensional topological insulators
• Generating and controlling spin-polarized currents induced by a quantum spin Hall antidot
• Variational principle for quantum impurity systems in and out of equilibrium: application to Kondo problems
• Electronic Hong-Ou-Mandel interferometry in two-dimensional topological insulators
• Nonlinear spin-thermoelectric transport in two-dimensional topological insulators
• Spin current pumping in helical Luttinger liquids
• Tunnel junction of helical edge states: Determining and controlling spin-preserving and spin-flipping processes through transconductance
• Time-resolved energy dynamics after single electron injection into an interacting helical liquid
• Polarized heat current generated by quantum pumping in two-dimensional topological insulators
• Spin textures of strongly correlated spin Hall quantum dots
• Transport phenomena in helical edge states interferometers. A Green's function approach
• Quantum charge pumping through resonant crossed Andreev reflection in superconducting hybrid junction of Silicene
• Electronic quantum optics beyond the integer quantum Hall effect
• Noise and current correlations in tunnel junctions of Quantum Spin Hall edge states
• Non-adiabatic topological spin pumping
• Magnetic AC control of the spin textures in a helical Luttinger liquid
• Coherent Single Spin Source based on topological insulator
• Topological insulator ring with magnetic impurities
• Effects of disorder on electron tunneling through helical edge states
• Interaction effects in non-equilibrium transport properties of a four-terminal topological corner junction
• Adiabatic quantum pumping through surface states in 3D topological insulators
• Fractional quantization of charge and spin in topological quantum pumps
• Tunable All Electric Spin Polarizer
• A topological current divider
• Fabry-Pérot interferometry with gate-tunable 3D topological insulator nanowires
• Transport in quantum spin Hall edges in contact to a quantum dot
• Tunneling between helical Majorana modes and helical Luttinger liquids
• Quantum pumping in helimagnet heterostructures