Spin and orbital motion surfaces in HgTe

摘要

Bloch-like surfaces that describe all possible spin states and, therefore, can be used to visualize spin precession and spin dynamics in external fields are presented for HgTe, a material with inverted energy bands. The spin and orbital surfaces for both free electrons and holes are shown, in general, to be spheroids, with the rotational axis parallel to a charge-carrier wave vector. The lengths of the principal axes of the spheroids depend on the energy band index and wave vector magnitude. At some wave vectors the surfaces may reduce to a line or a disc in the spin space. The corresponding graphs are presented.