Beating of Friedel oscillations induced by spin-orbit interaction

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how the interplay of Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit interactions causes anisotropic modifications in the dielectric function, leading to a novel beating phenomenon in Friedel oscillations.

Contribution

The authors derive an exact formula for the Lindhard polarization function with combined Rashba and Dresselhaus SOI, revealing new anisotropic effects and oscillation beating phenomena.

Findings

Identification of anisotropic modifications in the dielectric function due to SOI

Discovery of doubly-singular behavior in the polarization function

Prediction of Friedel oscillation beating in systems with strong SOI

Abstract

By exploiting our recently derived exact formula for the Lindhard polarization function in the presence of Bychkov-Rashba (BR) and Dresselhaus (D) spin-orbit interaction (SOI), we show that the interplay of different SOI mechanisms induces highly anisotropic modifications of the static dielectric function. We find that under certain circumstances the polarization function exhibits doubly-singular behavior, which leads to an intriguing novel phenomenon, beating of Friedel oscillations. This effect is a general feature of systems with BR+D SOI and should be observed in structures with a sufficiently strong SOI.