Boundary spin Hall effect in a two-dimensional semiconductor system with Rashba spin-orbit coupling

Abstract

We derive boundary conditions for the coupled spin-charge diffusion equations at a transmitting interface between two-dimensional electron systems with different strengths of the Rashba spin-orbit (SO) coupling $\alpha$, and an electric field parallel to the interface. We consider the limit where the spin-diffusion length l_s is long compared to the electron mean free path l, and assume that $\alpha$ changes discontinuously on the scale of l_s. We find that the spin density is also discontinuous on the scale of l_s. In the case where the electron mobility is constant across the interface, this leads to the complete suppression of the expected spin injection from a region with $\alpha \ne 0$ into a non-SO region with $\alpha =0$.

6 pages, 1 figure

References in corpus (5)

• Spin current and polarization in impure 2D electron systems with spin-orbit coupling
• Non-collinear Magnetoelectronics
• Spin polarization of electrons by non-magnetic heterostructures : basics of spin-optics
• Intrinsic Spin Hall Edges
• On boundary conditions for spin diffusion equations with Rashba spin-orbit interaction

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Theory of conserved spin current and its application to two dimensional hole gas
• Spin transport in mesoscopic rings with inhomogeneous spin-orbit coupling
• Extracting current-induced spins: spin boundary conditions at narrow Hall contacts
• Side jump contribution to spin-orbit mediated Hall effects and Berry curvature
• Spin-selective localization due to intrinsic spin-orbit coupling
• Nanomechanical Spin-Polarizer
• Hanle Effect near Boundaries