Universal Features of Spin Transport and Breaking of Unitary Symmetries

Abstract

When time-reversal symmetry is broken, quantum coherent systems with and without spin rotational symmetry exhibit the same universal behavior in their electric transport properties. We show that spin transport discriminates between these two cases. In systems with large charge conductance, spin transport is essentially insensitive to the breaking of time-reversal symmetry. However, in the opposite limit of a single exit channel, spin currents vanish identically in the presence of time-reversal symmetry, but are turned on by breaking it with an orbital magnetic field.

Final version, 5 pages, 3 figures in main text; supplemental material added

References in corpus (8)

• Semiclassical Theory of Chaotic Conductors
• Ehrenfest time dependent suppression of weak localization
• Mesoscopic Spin Hall Effect
• Dynamical model for the quantum-to-classical crossover of shot noise
• Spin polarized current generation from quantum dots without magnetic fields
• Generalized correlation functions for conductance fluctuations and the mesoscopic spin Hall effect
• Mesoscopic fluctuations of spin currents
• Stroboscopic model of transport through a quantum dot with spin-orbit scattering

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Spin-to-Charge Conversion in 2D Electron Gas and Single-layer Graphene Devices
• Manifestation of Majorana modes overlap in the Aharonov-Bohm effect
• Mechanism of Universal Conductance Fluctuations
• Spectral analysis of universal conductance fluctuations
• Electronic transport in three-terminal chaotic systems with a tunnel barrier