Non-linear spin to charge conversion in mesoscopic structures

Abstract

Motivated by recent experiments [Vera-Marun et al., arXiv:1109.5969], we formulate a non-linear theory of spin transport in quantum coherent conductors. We show how a mesoscopic constriction with energy-dependent transmission can convert a spin current injected by a spin accumulation into an electric signal, relying neither on magnetic nor exchange fields. When the transmission through the constriction is spin-independent, the spin-charge coupling is non-linear, with an electric signal that is quadratic in the accumulation. We estimate that gated mesoscopic constrictions have a sensitivity that allows to detect accumulations much smaller than a percent of the Fermi energy.

4 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (7)

• Electrical Detection of Spin Transport in Lateral Ferromagnet-Semiconductor Devices
• Electrical generation of pure spin currents in a two-dimensional electron gas
• Non-linear spin Seebeck effect due to spin-charge interaction in graphene
• Detection of current-induced spins by ferromagnetic contacts
• Nonlinear interaction of spin and charge currents in graphene
• Spin Accumulation and Spin Relaxation in a Large Open Quantum Dot
• Spin-to-Charge Conversion of Mesoscopic Spin Currents

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Colloquium: Spintronics in graphene and other two-dimensional materials
• Onsager Relations in Coupled Electric, Thermoelectric and Spin Transport: The Ten-Fold Way
• Footprints of hyperfine, spin-orbit, and decoherence effects in Pauli spin blockade
• Generation and Detection of Spin Currents in Semiconductor Nanostructures with Strong Spin-Orbit Interaction
• Spin-current Seebeck effect in quantum dot systems
• Non-linear spin filter for non-magnetic materials at zero magnetic field
• Large spin signal and spin rectification in folded-bilayer graphene