Impact of the Rashba Spin Orbit Coupling on $f$-electron Materials

Abstract

The combination of strong spin orbit coupling and strong correlations holds tremendous potential for interesting physical phenomena as well as applications in spintronics and quantum computation. In this context, we here study the interplay between the Rashba spin-orbit coupling (RSOC) and the Kondo screening in noncentrosymmetric $f$-electron materials. We show that the Kondo coupling of the $f$-electrons becomes anisotropic at high temperatures due to the RSOC. However, an isotropic Kondo effect is restored at low temperature which leads to a complete Kondo screening. We furthermore demonstrate that the Kondo effect has influence on the Rashba splitting in the band structure, which becomes temperature dependent. Although the $f$-electrons are localized at high temperature, a helical spin polarization of the conduction band emerges due to the scattering with the $f$-electrons. With decreasing temperature, the Kondo screening occurs, which leads to drastic changes in the band structure. Remarkably, these changes in the band structure depend on the helical spin polarization. For strong RSOC, we observe that the hybridization gap of one of the helical bands is closed at low temperature and a helical half-metal is formed.

References in corpus (12)

• Mott Insulators in the Strong Spin-Orbit Coupling Limit: From Heisenberg to a Quantum Compass and Kitaev Models
• Novel Jeff = 1/2 Mott State Induced by Relativistic Spin-Orbit Coupling in Sr2IrO4
• The numerical renormalization group method for quantum impurity systems
• Correlated Topological Insulators with Mixed Valence
• A Numerical Renormalization Group approach to Green's Functions for Quantum Impurity Models
• Superconductivity and Magnetism in Non-centrosymmetric System: Application to CePt_3Si
• Anomalous Upper Critical Field in CeCoIn_5/YbCoIn_5 Superlattices with a Rashba-type Heavy Fermion Interface
• Controllable Rashba spin-orbit interaction in artificially engineered superlattices involving the heavy-fermion superconductor CeCoIn5
• Heavy-fermion metals with hybridization nodes: Unconventional Fermi liquids and competing phases
• Kondo screening suppression by spin-orbit interaction in quantum dots
• Topological phase in a two-dimensional metallic heavy-fermion system
• Magnetism in f electron superlattices