Scattering induced spin orientation and spin currents in gyrotropic structures

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that gyrotropic quantum wells exhibit additional spin orientation and spin Hall effects due to their structural properties, with calculations indicating these effects can surpass traditional scattering contributions in high-mobility structures.

Contribution

It introduces a microscopic understanding of gyrotropy-induced spin effects in quantum wells, highlighting contributions beyond conventional skew scattering.

Findings

Gyrotropy leads to additional spin currents and orientations.

In high-mobility structures, these effects can dominate traditional mechanisms.

Theoretical calculations quantify the significance of gyrotropic contributions.

Abstract

It is shown that additional contributions both to current-induced spin orientation and to the spin Hall effect arise in quantum wells due to gyrotropy of the structures. Microscopically, they are related to basic properties of gyrotropic systems, namely, linear in the wave vector terms in the matrix element of electron scattering and in the energy spectrum. Calculation shows that in high-mobility structures the contribution to the spin Hall current considered here can exceed the term originated from the Mott skew scattering.