Spin-Hall effect due to the bulk states of topological insulators: Extrinsic contribution to the conserved spin current

TL;DR

This paper presents a detailed quantum mechanical calculation of the extrinsic spin Hall effect in topological insulators, highlighting the significant role of disorder mechanisms like side jump and skew scattering in contributing to the spin current.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive quantum mechanical analysis of extrinsic spin Hall effect in topological insulators, emphasizing the importance of disorder effects such as side jump and skew scattering.

Findings

Extrinsic contribution to spin current is comparable to intrinsic effects.

Side jump scattering is the dominant extrinsic mechanism.

Calculated spin susceptibility is too small to account for experimental spin torques.

Abstract

The substantial amount of recent research into spin torques has been accompanied by a revival of interest in the spin-Hall effect. This effect contributes to the spin torque in many materials, including topological insulator/ferromagnet devices, Weyl semimetals, and van der Waals heterostructures. In general the relative sizes of competing spin torque mechanisms remain poorly understood. Whereas a consensus is beginning to emerge on the evaluation of a conserved spin current, the role of extrinsic disorder mechanisms in the spin-Hall effect has not been clarified. In this work we present a comprehensive calculation of the extrinsic spin Hall effect while focussing on the bulk states of topological insulators as a prototype system and employing a fully quantum mechanical formalism to calculate the proper spin current. Our calculation of the proper spin current employs a 4x4 k.p Hamiltonian describing the bulk states of topological insulators. At the same time, we provide a qualitative explanation of the proper spin currents calculated based on an effective $2\times2$ Hamiltonian obtained via a Schrieffer-Wolf transformation. We find that the extrinsic contribution to the proper spin current, driven by side jump, skew scattering and related mechanisms, is of a comparable magnitude to the intrinsic contribution, making it vital to take such disorder effects into account when seeking to understand experiments. Among the scattering effects considered, side jump scattering is the primary contributor to the extrinsic spin Hall effect. The total spin susceptibility calculated here is too small to explain experimentally measured spin torques, hence we expect the spin Hall effect to make a negligible contribution to the spin torque in topological insulator structures.