Spatial imaging of the spin Hall effect and current-induced polarization in two-dimensional electron gases
By V. Sih, Roberto C. Myers, Y. Kato, W. Lau, Arthur C. Gossard, David D. Awschalom. 2005
329 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Spin–orbit coupling in semiconductors relates the spin of an electron to its momentum, and provides a pathway for electrically initializing and manipulating electron spins for applications in spintronics1 and spin-based quantum information processing2. This coupling can be regulated with quantum confinement in semiconductor heterostructures through band-structure engineering. Here we investigate the spin Hall effect3,4 and current-induced spin polarization5,6 in a two-dimensional electron gas confined in (110) AlGaAs quantum wells using Kerr rotation microscopy. In contrast to previous measurements7,8,9,10, the spin Hall profile shows complex structure and the current-induced spin polarization is out-of-plane. The experiments map the strong dependence of the current-induced spin polarization to the crystal axis along which the electric field is applied, reflecting the anisotropy of the spin–orbit interaction. These results reveal opportunities for tuning a spin source using quantum confinement and device engineering in non-magnetic materials.
Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Materials Chemistry
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/48b86debfa6d8a2f70e5c9df0ae9184f4c0b8938
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In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics
In Electrical and Electronic Engineering
In Materials Chemistry
Citations in the corpus
- Observation of the optical spin Hall effect (2007, background): “It leads to a separation in real space and momentum space between spin-up and spin-down electrons and thus enables control of electron spin in semiconductor spintronic device”
- Berry phase effects on electronic properties (2009, background): “They are first observed in semiconductors (Kato et al., 2004; Sih et al., 2005; Wunderlich et al., 2005), and later in metals (Kimura et al., 2007; Seki et al., 2008; Valenzuela and Tinkham, 2006).”