Rashba billiards

Abstract

We study the energy levels of non-interacting electrons confined to move in two-dimensional billiard regions and having a spin-dependent dynamics due to a finite Rashba spin splitting. The Green's function for such Rashba billiards is constructed analytically and used to find the area and perimeter contributions to the density of states, as well as the smooth counting function. We show that, in contrast to systems with spin-rotational invariance, Rashba billiards always possess a negative energy spectrum. A semi-classical analysis is presented to interpret the singular behavior of the density of states at certain negative energies. Our detailed analysis of the spin structure of Rashba billiards reveals a finite out-of-plane spin projection for electron eigenstates.

12 pages, 6 figures, minor changes in the text, submitted to PRB

References in corpus (3)

• Persistent current in ballistic mesoscopic rings with Rashba spin-orbit coupling
• Electronic and spin properties of Rashba billiards
• Weyl formulas for annular ray-splitting billiards

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Spin-orbit induced interference in quantum corrals
• Explicit Green functions for spin-orbit Hamiltonians
• Signature of chirality in scanning-probe imaging of charge flow in graphene
• Electron beam formation from spin-orbit interactions in zincblende semiconductor quantum wells
• Chaotic cyclotron and Hall trajectories due to spin-orbit coupling
• Spin Chaos Manifestation in a Driven Quantum Billiard with Spin-Orbit Coupling
• Rashba scattering in the low-energy limit
• Skew scattering due to intrinsic spin-orbit coupling in a two-dimensional electron gas
• Quantum interference patterns around magnetic impurities in a 2D electron gas with strong Rashba spin-orbit interaction