Mesoscopic Stern-Gerlach device to polarize spin currents

TL;DR

This paper proposes a mesoscopic interferometric device that separates spin-up and spin-down carriers using non-dispersive phases, functioning as a Stern-Gerlach analog without ferromagnetic contacts, advancing spintronics and quantum info processing.

Contribution

It introduces a novel mesoscopic spin polarizer leveraging Aharonov-Bohm and Rashba phases, eliminating the need for ferromagnetic contacts.

Findings

Separates spin states into distinct outputs

Converts spin information into charge degrees of freedom

Operates without ferromagnetic contacts

Abstract

Spin preparation and spin detection are fundamental problems in spintronics and in several solid state proposals for quantum information processing. Here we propose the mesoscopic equivalent of an optical polarizing beam splitter (PBS). This interferometric device uses non-dispersive phases (Aharonov-Bohm and Rashba) in order to separate spin up and spin down carriers into distinct outputs and thus it is analogous to a Stern-Gerlach apparatus. It can be used both as a spin preparation device and as a spin measuring device by converting spin into charge (orbital) degrees of freedom. An important feature of the proposed spin polarizer is that no ferromagnetic contacts are used.