Phase coherent quantum mechanical spin tranport in a weakly disordered quasi one-dimensional channel

Abstract

A transfer matrix technique is used to model phase coherent spin transport in the weakly disordered quasi one-dimensional channel of a gate-controlled electron spin interferometer [Datta and Das, Appl. Phys. Lett., 56, 665 (1990)]. It includes the effects of an axial magnetic field in the channel of the interferometer (caused by the ferromagnetic contacts), a Rashba spin-orbit interaction, and elastic (non-magnetic) impurity scattering. We show that in the presence of the axial magnetic field, non-magnetic impurities can cause spin relaxation in a manner similar to the Elliott-Yafet mechanism. The amplitudes and phases of the conductance oscillations of the interferometer, and the degree of spin-conductance polarization, are found to be quite sensitive to the height of the interface barrier at the contact, as well as the strength, locations and nature (attractive or repulsive) of just a few elastic non-magnetic impurities in the channel. This can seriously hinder practical applications of spin interferometers.

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References in corpus (10)

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• Effect of the spin-orbit interaction on the band structure and conductance of quasi-one-dimensional systems
• Spin Accumulation in Quantum Wires with Strong Rashba Spin-Orbit Coupling
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• The Effect of Ramsauer Type Transmission Resonances on the Conductance Modulation of Spin Interferometers
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• Rashba interaction in quantum wires with in-plane magnetic fields
• Strongly modulated transmission of a spin-split quantum wire with local Rashba interaction
• Proposal for a spintronic femto-Tesla magnetic field sensor
• Ballistic spin field-effect transistors: Multichannel effects
• Magnetoelectric subbands and eigenstates in the presence of Rashba and Drresselhaus spin orbit interactions in a quantum wire
• A Digital Switch and Femto-Tesla Magnetic Field Sensor Based on Fano Resonance in a Spin Field Effect Transistor
• A spin field effect transistor for low leakage current
• A Dual Gate Spin Field Effect Transistor With Very Low Switching Voltage and Large ON-to-OFF Conductance Ratio
• Enhancement of Rashba spin-orbit coupling by electron-electron interaction
• The inequality of charge and spin diffusion coefficients
• Influence of Nuclear Spin Polarization on Quantum Wire Conductance
• Semiconductor Spintronics: Progress and Challenges
• Can the interface between a non-ideal ferromagnet and a semiconductor quantum wire acts as an ideal spin filter?