Spin Hall effect in a system of Dirac fermions in the honeycomb lattice with intrinsic and Rashba spin-orbit interaction

TL;DR

This paper investigates the spin Hall effect in graphene's Dirac fermions considering intrinsic and Rashba spin-orbit interactions, revealing unique behaviors in spin Hall conductivity influenced by their interplay.

Contribution

It provides a theoretical calculation of the topological spin Hall conductivity in graphene with combined spin-orbit interactions, highlighting novel dependence on the Fermi level.

Findings

Spin Hall conductivity depends peculiarly on the Fermi level when both interactions are present.

The interplay of intrinsic and Rashba interactions leads to unique features in spin transport.

Topological contributions dominate the spin Hall effect in the idealized lattice model.

Abstract

We consider spin Hall effect in a system of massless Dirac fermions in a graphene lattice. Two types of spin-orbit interaction, pertinent to the graphene lattice, are taken into account - the intrinsic and Rashba terms. Assuming perfect crystal lattice, we calculate the topological contribution to spin Hall conductivity. When both interactions are present, their interplay is shown to lead to some peculiarities in the dependence of spin Hall conductivity on the Fermi level.