Spin Coulomb Drag

TL;DR

This paper introduces the concept of Spin Coulomb Drag, an intrinsic frictional effect in spin-polarized transport caused by Coulomb interactions, and discusses its theoretical calculation and experimental measurability.

Contribution

It presents the first theoretical calculation of spin transrestivity due to Coulomb interactions and proposes an experimental method to measure this effect.

Findings

Spin Coulomb Drag causes measurable spin resistivity.

The spin transrestivity depends on temperature, frequency, and electron density.

A generalized random phase approximation is used for calculations.

Abstract

We introduce a distinctive feature of spin-polarized transport, the Spin Coulomb Drag: there is an intrinsic source of friction for spin currents due to the Coulomb interaction between spin ``up'' and spin ``down'' electrons. We calculate the associated ``spin transrestistivity'' in a generalized random phase approximation and discuss its dependence on temperature, frequency, and electron density. We show that, in an appropriate range of parameters, such resistivity is measurable and propose an experiment to measure it.