Spin currents in thermodynamic equilibrium

By E. Rashba. 2003

176 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The standard definition of a spin current, applied to the conductors lacking inversion symmetry, results in nonzero spin currents. I demonstrate that the spin currents do not vanish even in the thermodynamic equilibrium, in the absence of external fields. These currents are dissipationless and are not associated with a real spin transport. The result should be taken as a warning indicating problems inherent in the theory of transport spin currents driven by external fields.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Electrical and Electronic Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ad48c7542f42726219cae3aad107753719bfdee0

Citations in the corpus

• Spintronics: Fundamentals and applications (2004, unknown): “Rashba (2003b) has pointed out that similar dissipationless spin currents in thermodynamic equilibrium, due to spin-orbit interaction, are not transport currents which could be employed for transporting spins and spin injection.”