# Chirality relaxation in low-temperature strongly Rashba-coupled systems

## TL;DR

This paper investigates how non-equilibrium chirality distributions in Rashba systems relax at low temperatures, highlighting the dominance of inter-carrier scattering and its dependence on spin structure, with implications for materials like GeTe.

## Contribution

It introduces a framework for understanding chirality relaxation in Rashba systems, emphasizing the role of inter-carrier scattering suppressed phonon interactions at low temperatures.

## Key findings

- Inter-Rashba band transitions are suppressed at low temperatures.
- Inter-carrier Coulomb scattering dominates chirality relaxation.
- Explicit inter-band relaxation timescales are provided for GeTe.

## Abstract

We study the relaxation dynamics of non-equilibrium chirality distributions of charge carriers in Rashba systems. We find that at low temperature inter-Rashba band transitions become suppressed due to the combined effect of the Rashba momentum split and the chiral spin texture of a Rashba system. Specifically, we show that momentum exchange between carriers and the phonon bath is effectively absent at temperatures where the momentum of thermal phonons is less than twice the Rashba momentum. This allows us to identify inter-carrier scattering as the dominant process by which non-equilibrium chirality distributions relax. We show that the magnitude of inter-carrier scattering is strongly influenced by the opposing spin structure of the Rashba bands. Finally, we provide an explicit result for the inter-band relaxation timescale associated with inter-carrier Coulomb scattering. We develop a general framework and assess its implications for GeTe, a bulk Rashba semiconductor with a strong Rashba momentum split.