Localization and spin transport in honeycomb structures with spin-orbit coupling

Abstract

Transfer-matrix methods are used for a tight-binding description of electron transport in graphene-like geometries, in the presence of spin-orbit couplings. Application of finite-size scaling and phenomenological renormalization techniques shows that, for strong enough spin-orbit interactions and increasing on-site disorder, this system undergoes a metal-insulator transition characterized by the exponents $\nu =2.71(8)$, $\eta =0.174(2)$. We show how one can extract information regarding spin polarization decay with distance from an injection edge, from the evolution of wave-function amplitudes in the transfer-matrix approach. For (relatively weak) spin-orbit coupling intensity $\mu$, we obtain that the characteristic length ${\Lambda }_s$ for spin-polarization decay behaves as ${\Lambda }_s\propto {\mu }^{-2}$.

7 pages, 6 figures (published version)

References in corpus (7)

• The electronic properties of graphene
• Two Dimensional Atomic Crystals
• Stable single-layer honeycomb like structure of silica
• Anderson localization of electron states in graphene in different types of disorder
• Criticality of the metal-topological insulator transition driven by disorder
• Anomalous dynamics in two- and three- dimensional Heisenberg-Mattis spin glasses
• Critical line of honeycomb-lattice anisotropic Ising antiferromagnets in a field

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Driven flow with exclusion and spin-dependent transport in graphenelike structures