SPIN-ORBIT INTERACTION AND RELATED TRANSPORT PHENOMENA IN 2D ELECTRON AND HOLE SYSTEMS

摘要

Spin-orbit interaction is responsible for many physical phenomena which are under intensive study currently. Here we discuss several of them. The first phenomenon is the edge spin accumulation, which appears due to spin-orbit interaction in 2D mesoscopic structures in the presence of a charge current. We consider the case of a strong spin-orbit-related splitting of the electron spectrum, i.e. a spin precession length is small compared to the mean free path 1. The structure can be either in a ballistic regime (when the mean free path is the largest scale in the problem) or quasi-ballistic regime (when 1 is much smaller than the sample size). We show how physics of edge spin accumulation in different situations should be understood from the point of view of unitarity of boundary scattering. Using transparent method of scattering states, we are able to explain some previous puzzling theoretical results. We clarify the important role of the form of the spin-or bit Hamiltonian, the role of the boundary conditions, etc., and reveal the wrong results obtained in the field by other researchers. The relation between the edge spin density and the bulk spin current in different regimes is discussed. The detailed comparison with the existing theoretical works is presented. Besides, we consider several new transport phenomena which appear in the presence of spin-orbit interaction, for example, magnetotransport phenomena in an external classical magnetic field. In particular, new mechanism of negative magneto-resistance appears which is due to destruction of spin fluxes by the magnetic field, and which can be really pronounced in 2D systems with strong scatterers.