Spin Transport in Disordered Two-Dimensional Hopping Systems with Rashba Spin-Orbit Interaction

TL;DR

This paper investigates how Rashba spin-orbit interaction affects spin dynamics in disordered two-dimensional hopping systems, extending previous ordered system models to include disorder effects on spin lifetime and transport properties.

Contribution

It generalizes existing models by incorporating disorder into the analysis of spin transport with Rashba interaction, providing explicit relations for disordered systems based on ordered system expressions.

Findings

Disorder influences spin lifetime in hopping systems.

Ordered system models can be adapted for disordered systems with frequency-dependent parameters.

Large Rashba length allows ordered system expressions to describe disordered systems effectively.

Abstract

The influence of Rashba spin-orbit interaction on the spin dynamics of a topologically disordered hopping system is studied in this paper. This is a significant generalization of a previous investigation, where an ordered (polaronic) hopping system has been considered instead. It is found, that in the limit, where the Rashba length is large compared to the typical hopping length, the spin dynamics of a disordered system can still be described by the expressions derived for an ordered system, under the provision that one takes into account the frequency dependence of the diffusion constant and the mobility (which are determined by charge transport and are independent of spin). With these results we are able to make explicit the influence of disorder on spin related quantities as, e.g., the spin life-time in hopping systems.