Theory of coupled spin-charge transport due to spin-orbit interaction in inhomogeneous two-dimensional electron liquids

Abstract

Spin-orbit interactions in two-dimensional electron liquids are responsible for many interesting transport phenomena in which particle currents are converted to spin polarizations and spin currents and viceversa. Prime examples are the spin Hall effect, the Edelstein effect, and their inverses. By similar mechanisms it is also possible to partially convert an optically induced electron-hole density wave to a spin density wave and viceversa. In this paper we present a unified theoretical treatment of these effects based on quantum kinetic equations that include not only the intrinsic spin-orbit coupling from the band structure of the host material, but also the spin-orbit coupling due to an external electric field and a random impurity potential. The drift-diffusion equations we derive in the diffusive regime are applicable to a broad variety of experimental situations, both homogeneous and non-homogeneous, and include on equal footing "skew scattering" and "side-jump" from electron-impurity collisions. As a demonstration of the strength and usefulness of the theory we apply it to the study of several effects of current experimental interest: the inverse Edelstein effect, the spin-current swapping effect, and the partial conversion of an electron-hole density wave to a spin density wave in a two-dimensional electron gas with Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit couplings, subject to an electric field.

19 pages, 6 figures

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Cited by in corpus (15)

• Ballistic spin transport in the presence of interfaces with strong spin-orbit coupling
• Spin diffusion and torques in disordered antiferromagnets
• Spin drift and diffusion in one- and two-subband helical systems
• Boundary conditions for spin and charge diffusion in the presence of interfacial spin-orbit coupling
• Nonlinear $\sigma$-model for disordered systems with intrinsic spin-orbit coupling
• Spin current swapping and Hanle spin Hall effect in the two dimensional electron gas
• Magnetically tunable exciton valley coherence in monolayer WS${}_2$ mediated by the electron-hole exchange and exciton-phonon interactions
• Theory of inverse Rashba-Edelstein effect induced by spin pumping into a two-dimensional electron gas
• Magnon spin transport around the compensation magnetic field in easy-plane antiferromagnetic insulators
• Spin-charge conversion in disordered two-dimensional electron gases lacking inversion symmetry
• Spin drift-diffusion for two-subband quantum wells
• Theory of spin-charge-coupled transport in proximitized graphene: An SO(5) algebraic approach
• Theory of the inverse Rashba-Edelstein effect induced by thermal spin injection
• Laser-field detuning assisted optimization of exciton valley dynamics in monolayer WSe${}_2$: Geometric quantum speed limit
• Resonant Edelstein and inverse-Edelstein effects, charge-to-spin conversion, and spin pumping from chiral-spin modes