Intensity correlations in electronic wave propagation in a disordered medium: the influence of spin-orbit scattering

TL;DR

This paper derives explicit correlation functions for electronic wave transmission and reflection in disordered media with spin-orbit interactions, revealing how spin-orbit scattering suppresses intensity fluctuations and influences conductance fluctuations.

Contribution

It provides explicit analytical expressions for intensity correlation functions considering spin-orbit effects in disordered electronic systems, highlighting a universal suppression factor.

Findings

Spin-orbit scattering suppresses intensity fluctuations by a factor of 4.

Long-range correlations contribute to universal conductance fluctuations.

Explicit correlation functions are derived for disordered quasi-one-dimensional systems.

Abstract

We obtain explicit expressions for the correlation functions of transmission and reflection coefficients of coherent electronic waves propagating through a disordered quasi-one-dimensional medium with purely elastic diffusive scattering in the presence of spin-orbit interactions. We find in the metallic regime both large local intensity fluctuations and long-range correlations which ultimately lead to universal conductance fluctuations. We show that the main effect of spin-orbit scattering is to suppress both local and long-range intensity fluctuations by a universal symmetry factor 4. We use a scattering approach based on random transfer matrices.