Semiclassical path integral approach on spin relaxations in narrow wires

TL;DR

This paper applies a semiclassical path integral method to study spin relaxation in narrow wires with Rashba interaction, revealing transitions in spin dynamics and validating results against experimental and diffusion theory data.

Contribution

It introduces the semiclassical path integral approach for analyzing spin relaxation in narrow wires, providing new insights into spin dynamics and agreement with experimental and theoretical models.

Findings

Good agreement with experimental data

Transition from exponential to oscillatory relaxation with decreasing wire width

Validation of the method against diffusion theory calculations

Abstract

The semiclassical path integral method has been applied for studying spin relaxation in a narrow 2D strip with the Rashba spin-orbit interaction. Our numerical calculations show a good agreement with the experimental data, although some features of experimental results are not clear yet. We also calculated the relaxation of a uniform spin-density distribution in the ballistic regime of very narrow wires. With the decreasing wire width, the spin polarization exhibits a transition from the exponential decay to the oscillatory Bessel-like relaxation. The SPI method has been also employed to calculate the relaxation of the particularly long-lived helix mode. A good agreement has been found with calculations based on the diffusion theory.