Enhanced spin Hall effect by electron correlations in CuBi alloys

Abstract

A recent experiment in CuBi alloys obtained a large spin Hall angle (SHA) of -0.24 (Niimi et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 156602 (2012)). We find that the SHA can be dramatically enhanced by Bi impurities close to the Cu surface. The mechanisms of this enhancement are two-fold. One is that the localized impurity state on surface has a decreased hybridization and combined with Coulomb correlation effect. The other comes from the low-dimensional state of conduction electrons on surface, which results in a further enhancement of skew scattering by impurities. Furthermore, we note that a discrepancy in sign of SHA between the experiment and previous theories is simply caused by different definitions of SHA. This re-establishes skew scattering as the essential mechanism underlying the spin Hall effect in CuBi alloys.

5 pages, 1 figure

References in corpus (3)

• Theory of Spin Hall conductivity in n-doped GaAs
• Extrinsic spin Hall effects measured with lateral spin valve structures
• Enhanced spin Hall effect by resonant skew scattering in orbital-selective Kondo effect

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Reciprocal spin Hall effects in conductors with strong spin-orbit coupling: a review
• Enhanced Magneto-optical Kerr Effect at Fe/Insulator Interfaces
• What determines the sign of the spin Hall effects in Cu alloys doped with 5d elements?
• Absence of strong skew scattering in crystals with multi-sheeted Fermi surfaces