Magneto-spin Hall conductivity of a two-dimensional electron gas

M. Milletarì; R. Raimondi; P. Schwab

doi:doi:10.1209/0295-5075/82/67005

EPL, 82 (2008) 67005
DOI: 10.1209/0295-5075/82/67005

Magneto-spin Hall conductivity of a two-dimensional electron gas

M. Milletarì¹, R. Raimondi¹ and P. Schwab²

¹ CNISM and Dipartimento di Fisica "E. Amaldi", Università Roma Tre - via della Vasca Navale 84, 00146 Roma, Italy, EU
² Institut für Physik, Universität Augsburg - 86135 Augsburg, Germany, EU

raimondi@fis.uniroma3.it

received 11 January 2008; accepted in final form 22 April 2008; published June 2008
published online 5 June 2008

Abstract
It is shown that the interplay of long-range disorder and in-plane magnetic field gives rise to an out-of-plane spin polarization and a finite spin Hall conductivity of the two-dimensional electron gas in the presence of Rashba spin-orbit coupling. A key aspect is provided by the electric-field $\hbox{--}$ induced in-plane spin polarization. Our results are obtained first in the clean limit where the spin-orbit splitting is much larger than the disorder broadening of the energy levels via the diagrammatic evaluation of the Kubo formula. Then the results are shown to hold in the full range of the disorder parameter $\alpha$ p_F $\tau$ by means of the quasiclassical Green function technique.

PACS
72.25.Dc - Spin polarized transport in semiconductors.
72.25.Rb - Spin relaxation and scattering.
72.10.Fk - Scattering by point defects, dislocations, surfaces, and other imperfections (including Kondo effect).

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