Thermoelectric probe for Rashba spin-orbit interaction strength in a two dimensional electron gas

TL;DR

This paper investigates how Rashba spin-orbit interaction influences thermoelectric properties in a two-dimensional electron gas, revealing oscillatory behaviors and providing analytical tools to measure the interaction strength experimentally.

Contribution

It introduces analytical expressions for thermoelectric coefficients in the presence of Rashba spin-orbit interaction and magnetic fields, enabling experimental determination of the SOI strength.

Findings

Thermoelectric coefficients are enhanced without magnetic field due to Rashba SOI.

Oscillations and beating patterns in thermoelectric properties occur with magnetic field.

A simple relation links beat node positions to Rashba SOI strength.

Abstract

Thermoelectric coefficients of a two dimensional electron gas with the Rashba spin-orbit interaction are presented here. In absence of magnetic field, thermoelectric coefficients are enhanced due to the Rashba spin-orbit interaction. In presence of magnetic field, the thermoelectric coefficients of spin-up and spin-down electrons oscillate with different frequency and produces beating patterns in the components of the total thermoelectric power and the total thermal conductivity. We also provide analytical expressions of the thermoelectric coefficients to explain the beating pattern formation. We obtain a simple relation which determines the Rashba SOI strength if the magnetic fields corresponding to any two successive beat nodes are known from the experiment.