Anisotropy of transport in bulk Rashba metals

Abstract

The recent experimental discovery of three-dimensional (3D) materials hosting a strong Rashba spin-orbit coupling calls for the theoretical investigation of their transport properties. Here we study the zero temperature dc conductivity of a 3D Rashba metal in the presence of static diluted impurities. We show that, at variance with the two-dimensional case, in 3D systems spin-orbit coupling affects dc charge transport in all density regimes. We find in particular that the effect of spin-orbit interaction strongly depends on the direction of the current, and we show that this yields strongly anisotropic transport characteristics. In the dominant spin-orbit coupling regime where only the lowest band is occupied, the SO-induced conductivity anisotropy is governed entirely by the anomalous component of the renormalized current. We propose that measurements of the conductivity anisotropy in bulk Rashba metals may give a direct experimental assessment of the spin-orbit strength.

7 pages, 3 figures

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Cited by in corpus (8)

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• Multigaps superconductivity at unconventional Lifshitz transition in a 3D Rashba heterostructure at atomic limit
• High-Tc superconducting dome in artificial heterostructures made of nanoscale quantum building blocks
• Thermoelectric and optical probes for a Fermi surface topology change in noncentrosymmetric metals
• Rashba-metal to Mott-insulator transition
• Unconventional transport in low-density two-dimensional Rashba systems
• Quasiclassical theory of the spin-orbit magnetoresistance of three-dimensional Rashba metals
• Dynamical polarization and plasmons in noncentrosymmetric metals