Intrinsic Spin Swapping

Abstract

Here, we study diffusive spin transport in two dimensions and demonstrate that an intrinsic analog to a previously predicted extrinsic spin swapping effect, where the spin polarization and the direction of flow are interchanged due to spin-orbit coupling at extrinsic impurities, can be induced by intrinsic (Rashba) spin-orbit coupling. The resulting accumulation of intrinsically spin-swapped polarizations is shown to be much larger than for the extrinsic effect. Intrinsic spin swapping is particularly strong when the system dimensions exceed the spin-orbit precession length and the generated transverse spin currents are of the order of the injected primary spin currents. In contrast, spin accumulations and spin currents caused by extrinsic spin swapping are proportional to the spin-orbit coupling. We present numerical and analytical results for the secondary spin currents and accumulations generated by intrinsic spin swapping, and we derive analytic expressions for the induced spin accumulation at the edges of a narrow strip, where a long-range propagation of spin polarizations takes place.

7 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (7)

• Dissipationless Quantum Spin Current at Room Temperature
• Direct electronic measurement of the spin Hall effect
• Current-Induced Polarization and the Spin Hall Effect at Room Temperature
• Swapping of spin currents: interchanging spin and flow directions
• Generation of spin current and polarization under dynamic gate control of spin-orbit interaction in low-dimensional semiconductor systems
• Interplay of intrinsic and extrinsic mechanisms to the spin Hall effect in a two-dimensional electron gas
• Spin Injection in Quantum Wells with Spatially Dependent Rashba Interaction

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Perspectives of Electrically generated spin currents in ferromagnetic materials
• Spin Swapping Transport and Torques in Ultrathin Magnetic Bilayers
• Theory of coupled spin-charge transport due to spin-orbit interaction in inhomogeneous two-dimensional electron liquids
• Orbital Pumping Incorporating Both Orbital Angular Momentum and Position
• Spin-Orbit-Induced Spin, Charge, and Energy Transport in Diffusive Superconductors
• Spin current swapping and Hanle spin Hall effect in the two dimensional electron gas
• Theoretical Study of Extrinsic Spin-current Generation in Ferromagnets Induced by Anisotropic Spin-flip Scattering