We discuss the transport properties of a disordered two-dimensional electron gas with strong Rashba spin-orbit coupling. We show that in the high-density regime where the Fermi energy overcomes the energy associated with spin-orbit coupling, dc transport is accurately described by a standard Drude's law, due to a nontrivial compensation between the suppression of backscattering and the relativistic correction to the quasiparticle velocity. On the contrary, when the system enters the opposite dominant spin-orbit regime, Drude's paradigm breaks down and the dc conductivity becomes strongly sensitive to the spin-orbit coupling strength, providing a suitable tool to test the entanglement between spin and charge degrees of freedom in these systems.
Unconventional dc Transport in Rashba Electron Gases / Brosco, Valentina; Benfatto, Lara; Cappelluti, Emmanuele; Grimaldi, Claudio. - In: PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS. - ISSN 0031-9007. - 116:16(2016). [10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.166602]
Unconventional dc Transport in Rashba Electron Gases
Benfatto Lara;Cappelluti Emmanuele;
2016
Abstract
We discuss the transport properties of a disordered two-dimensional electron gas with strong Rashba spin-orbit coupling. We show that in the high-density regime where the Fermi energy overcomes the energy associated with spin-orbit coupling, dc transport is accurately described by a standard Drude's law, due to a nontrivial compensation between the suppression of backscattering and the relativistic correction to the quasiparticle velocity. On the contrary, when the system enters the opposite dominant spin-orbit regime, Drude's paradigm breaks down and the dc conductivity becomes strongly sensitive to the spin-orbit coupling strength, providing a suitable tool to test the entanglement between spin and charge degrees of freedom in these systems.File | Dimensione | Formato | |
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