We used spatially-and time-resolved Kerr rotation microscopy to show that in lateral wire-like structures, based on a modulation-doped GaAs-AlGaAs quantum well, an optically initialized spin polarization can be deterministically transferred to specific lateral positions, employing the persistent spin helix (PSH). To this end, we show that confinement in two directions leads to a strong enhancement of the effective decay time of spin polarization, which can be exploited to transfer spin polarization over relatively large lateral distances. This is demonstrated by the investigation of L-shaped wire-like lateral structures, where the legs are positioned in directions parallel and perpendicular to the wave vector of the PSH. Published by AIP Publishing.[http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4966184]The key tool to manipulate the spin in semiconductorbased devices is spin-orbit interaction. 1 However, on the downside, the spin-orbit interaction leads to spin dephasing, which limits the performance of spintronics or spin-based information processing devices. In this respect, an important milestone has been the proposal of a SU(2) spin rotation symmetry in quantum wells, based on the zincblende-type semiconductors, by Bernevig et al. 2 For (001)-grown quantum wells, this outstanding situation occurs for balanced linear Rashba 3 and Dresselhaus 4 spin-orbit fields. Very appealingly, the SU(2) symmetry ideally protects the system against Dyakonov-Perel spin dephasing 5 and should support a helical mode, the so called persistent spin helix (PSH), which opens up interesting application possibilities. Even before the proposal of Bernevig et al., Schliemann et al. suggested a non-ballistic spin field-effect transistor, based on the same theoretical principles of balanced spin-orbit fields. 6 Since then, a wealth of experimental and theoretical investigations has appeared along these lines. Most prominent are the first experimental evidences of the existence of a PSH by transient spin grating spectroscopy, 7 direct mapping via time-and spatially-resolved Kerr microscopy, 8 and weak localization/antilocalization experiments. 9 Closely related, a spin Hall effect transistor was demonstrated by Wunderlich et al. 10 Subsequently, the PSH was investigated in, e.g., gated structures, 11 laterally confined structures, 12 structures with imbalanced spin-orbit interactions 13,14 or via inelastic light scattering. 15 Very recently, investigations in biased structures under charge transport were reported. 16,17 In this work, we used spatially-and time-resolved Kerr rotation microscopy to show that spin polarization can be deterministically transferred to specific lateral positions via the PSH. We started by experimentally verifying the PSH in the as-grown sample, a GaAs-AlGaAs single quantum well, via spatially-resolved Kerr microscopy, followed by the investigation of narrow channels with lateral widths down to 3 lm. These experiments have shown that the effective decay time of the spin polarization is prolonged by a factor of about three in nar...