Rashba scattering in the low-energy limit
arXiv:1603.09456 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.93.245309
Abstract
We study potential scattering in a two-dimensional electron gas with Rashba spin-orbit coupling in the limit that the energy of the scattering electron approaches the bottom of the lower spin-split band. Focusing on two spin-independent circularly symmetric potentials, an infinite barrier and a delta-function shell, we show that scattering in this limit is qualitatively different from both scattering in the higher spin-split band and scattering of electrons without spin-orbit coupling. The scattering matrix is purely off-diagonal with both off-diagonal elements equal to one, and all angular momentum channels contribute equally; the differential cross section becomes increasingly peaked in the forward and backward scattering directions; the total cross section exhibits quantized plateaus. These features are independent of the details of the scattering potentials, and we conjecture them to be universal. Our results suggest that Rashba scattering in the low-energy limit becomes effectively one-dimensional.
corrected typo in Eq. (27). 10 pages, 6 figures
References in corpus (8)
- New Perspectives for Rashba Spin-Orbit Coupling
- Silicon surface with giant spin-splitting
- Topological Change of the Fermi Surface in Low Density Rashba Gases: Application to Superconductivity
- Electronic and spin properties of Rashba billiards
- Ferromagnetic and Nematic Non-Fermi Liquids in Spin-Orbit Coupled Two-Dimensional Fermi Gases
- Two-dimensional electron scattering in regions of nonuniform spin-orbit coupling
- Electron scattering from a mesoscopic disk in Rashba system
- Skew scattering due to intrinsic spin-orbit coupling in a two-dimensional electron gas
Cited by in corpus (4)
- Scattering framework for two particles with isotropic spin-orbit coupling applicable to all energies
- Unconventional transport in low-density two-dimensional Rashba systems
- Universality of low-energy Rashba scattering
- Friedel oscillations in 2D electron gas from spin-orbit interaction in a parallel magnetic field