Manifestation of the spin-Hall effect through transport measurements in the mesoscopic regime

TL;DR

This paper theoretically demonstrates how the spin-Hall effect manifests in mesoscopic two-dimensional systems with Rashba spin-orbit coupling through transport measurements, showing measurable voltages without magnetic elements and confirming robustness against disorder.

Contribution

It introduces a realistic transport measurement approach to detect the spin-Hall effect in mesoscopic structures using the Landauer-Buttiker formalism.

Findings

Measurable Rashba-dependent voltage in H-shape structures.

Robustness of intrinsic spin-Hall effect against disorder.

Confirmation of theoretical predictions with realistic experimental parameters.

Abstract

We study theoretically the manifestation of the spin-Hall effect in a two-dimensional electronic system with Rashba spin-orbit coupling via dc-transport measurements in realistic mesoscopic H-shape structures. The Landauer-Buttiker formalism is used to model samples with mobilities and Rashba coupling strengths of current experiments and to demonstrate the appearance of a measurable Rashba-coupling dependent voltage. This type of measurement requires only metal contacts, i.e., no magnetic elements are present. We also confirm the robustness of the intrinsic spin-Hall effect against disorder in the mesoscopic metallic regime in agreement with results of exact diagonalization studies in the bulk.