paper

Coriolis force, geometric phase, and spin-electric coupling in semiconductors

arXiv:cond-mat/0504183 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.73.195317

Abstract

We consider the response of an effective spin of a charge carrier to an adiabatic rotation of its crystal momentum induced by electric field. This rotation gives rise to Coriolis pseudo-force that is responsible for torque acting on the orbital momentum of a particle. Mediated by a spin-orbit coupling in the valence band this perturbation leads to a spin-electric coupling that may affect the coherent transport properties of a charge carrier and cause a spin precession in zero magnetic fields. In the static uniform electric field the derived effective spin-Hamiltonians of the carriers in the conduction and light hole bands are homologous to the Rashba Hamiltonian. These effects may be also interpreted as a manifestation of, in general, a non-Abelian gauge potential and can be described in purely geometric terms as a consequence of the corresponding holonomy. We demonstrate that in the conduction band the strength of the associated covariant gauge field is proportional to the effective electron g-tensor and is controllable by gate fields or a strain applied to the crystal.

The minor error in the estimate of the strength of the covariant gauge field in the conduction band of wide gap semiconductors (p.5 of the published article) was corrected

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