Manifestation of spin-orbit interaction in tunneling between 2D electron layers

TL;DR

This paper investigates how spin-orbit interactions, specifically Rashba and Dresselhaus effects, influence tunneling conductance between two 2D electron layers, revealing sensitive dependencies useful for parameter determination without magnetic fields.

Contribution

It demonstrates the impact of spin-orbit interactions on tunneling conductance, highlighting the potential to extract interaction parameters without external magnetic fields.

Findings

Conductance exhibits resonances or suppression depending on spin-orbit contributions.

Voltage dependence of conductance is highly sensitive to Rashba and Dresselhaus relation.

Elastic scattering broadens resonances and affects conductance magnitude.

Abstract

An influence of spin-orbit interaction on the tunneling between two 2D electron layers is considered. Particular attention is addressed to the relation between the contribution of Rashba and Dresselhaus types. It is shown that without scattering of the electrons, the tunneling conductance can either exhibit resonances at certain voltage values or be substantially suppressed over the whole voltage range. The dependence of the conductance on voltage turns out to be very sensitive to the relation between Rashba and Dresselhaus contributions even in the absence of magnetic field. The elastic scattering broadens the resonances in the first case and restores the conductance to a larger magnitude in the latter one. These effects open possibility to determine the parameters of spin-orbit interaction and electrons scattering time in tunneling experiments with no necessity of external magnetic field.