Spin Polarization Dependence of Carrier Effective Mass in Semiconductor Structures: Spintronic Effective Mass

TL;DR

This paper introduces the concept of a spintronic effective mass for spin-polarized carriers in semiconductors, highlighting how strong spin polarization significantly alters the effective mass, impacting spintronic device performance.

Contribution

It presents a new concept of spintronic effective mass and quantifies its dependence on spin polarization in 2D and 3D semiconductor systems.

Findings

Majority-spin effective mass varies by over a factor of 2 in 2D systems at rs=5.

In 3D systems, the polarization dependence of effective mass is about 15%.

Spin polarization significantly influences carrier effective mass in semiconductor structures.

Abstract

We introduce the concept of a spintronic effective mass for spin-polarized carriers in semiconductor structures, which arises from the strong spin-polarization dependence of the renormalized effective mass in an interacting spin-polarized electron system. The majority-spin many-body effective mass renormalization differs by more than a factor of 2 at rs=5 between the unpolarized and the fully polarized two-dimensional system, whereas the polarization dependence (~15%) is more modest in three dimensions around metallic densities (rs~5). The spin-polarization dependence of the carrier effective mass is of significance in various spintronic applications.