Electronic and spin properties of Rashba billiards

TL;DR

This paper investigates the electronic and spin properties of electrons confined in Rashba billiards, revealing that low-energy eigenvalues are well-described semiclassically and exhibit finite perpendicular spin polarization.

Contribution

It provides a combined semiclassical and quantum-mechanical analysis of Rashba billiards, highlighting the behavior of low-energy eigenvalues and eigenspinors with finite perpendicular spin polarization.

Findings

Low-energy eigenvalues are well described semiclassically when spin precession length is smaller than billiard radius.

Eigenstates show finite spin polarization perpendicular to the billiard plane.

The study bridges semiclassical and quantum approaches for Rashba billiards.

Abstract

Ballistic electrons confined to a billiard and subject to spin--orbit coupling of the Rashba type are investigated, using both approximate semiclassical and exact quantum--mechanical methods. We focus on the low--energy part of the spectrum that has negative eigenvalues. When the spin precession length is smaller than the radius of the billiard, the low--lying energy eigenvalues turn out to be well described semiclassically. Corresponding eigenspinors are found to have a finite spin polarization in the direction perpendicular to the billiard plane.