Non-vanishing spin Hall currents in disordered spin-orbit coupling systems

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates through numerical simulations that intrinsic spin Hall currents in disordered two-dimensional electron gases with Rashba spin-orbit coupling remain robust despite disorder scattering, highlighting their potential for spintronic applications.

Contribution

It provides the first numerical evidence that intrinsic spin Hall effects persist in disordered systems with Rashba spin-orbit interactions.

Findings

Intrinsic spin Hall currents are robust against disorder.

Numerical simulations confirm the persistence of spin Hall conductivity.

Disorder does not suppress the intrinsic spin Hall effect in R2DES.

Abstract

Spin currents that flow perpendicular to the electric field direction are generic in metals and doped semiconductors with spin-orbit coupling. It has recently been argued that the spin Hall conductivity can be dominated by an intrinsic contribution which follows from Bloch state distortion in the presence of an electric field. Here we report on an numerical demonstration of the robustness of this effect in the presence of disorder scattering for the case of a two-dimensional electron-gas with Rashba spin-orbit interactions (R2DES).