Theory of Unconventional Spin States in Surfaces with Non-Rashba Spin-Orbit Interaction

TL;DR

This paper investigates non-Rashba spin splitting in surface states of Tl/Si and Bi/Si, constructing models to analyze spin transport, polarization, and bound states influenced by crystallographic symmetries and spin-orbit interactions.

Contribution

It introduces tight-binding Hamiltonians that capture non-Rashba spin splitting and analyzes spin polarization and bound states in these surface systems.

Findings

Induced spin polarization is in-plane and perpendicular to the current.

Crystallographic symmetries determine the spin polarization direction.

Bound states occur at junctions with differing spin-orbit parameters.

Abstract

Surface states in Tl/Si(111) and Bi/Si(111) show non-Rashba-type spin splitting. We study spin-transport properties in these surface states. First we construct tight-binding Hamiltonians for Tl/Si and Bi/Si surfaces, which respect crystallographic symmetries. As a result, we find specific terms in the Tl/Si surface Hamiltonian responsible for non-Rashba spin splitting. Using this model we calculate current-induced spin polarization in the Tl/Si Hamiltonian in order to see the effect of non-Rashba spin-orbit interaction. We found that the induced spin polarization is in-plane and perpendicular to the current, which is consequently the same with Rashba systems. We find that it follows from crystallographic symmetries. Furthermore, we numerically find bound states at the junction between two surface regions which have different signs of the spin-orbit interaction parameters in the Bi/Si system and in the Tl/Si system. We explain these numerical results with the results of our analytical calculations.