Spin precession and modulation in ballistic cylindrical nanowires due to the Rashba effect

Abstract

The spin precession in a cylindrical semiconductor nanowire due to Rashba spin-orbit coupling has been investigated theoretically using an InAs nanowire containing a surface two-dimensional electron gas as a model. The eigenstates, energy-momentum dispersion, and the energy-magnetic field dispersion relation are determined by solving the Schrödinger equation in a cylindrical symmetry. The combination of states with the same total angular momentum but opposite spin orientation results in a periodic modulation of the axial spin component along the axis of the wire. Spin-precession about the wires axis is achieved by interference of two states with different total angular momentum. Because a superposition state with exact opposite spin precession exists at zero magnetic field, an oscillation of the spin orientation can be obtained. If an axially oriented magnetic field is applied, the spin gains an additional precessing component.

Magnetoconductance correction in zinc-blende semiconductor nanowires with spin-orbit coupling

“…[38], the narrow band gap of InAs results in large Rashba and Dresselhaus SOC coefficients γ R = 117.1 eÅ 2 and γ D = 27.18 eVÅ 3 , respectively. Moreover, the effective mass is given by m = 0.026 m e where m e is the bare electron mass [35]. In line with the experimental setup of Ref.…”

“…The WAL/WL effect in the diffusive regime was analyzed by Kettemann [32] and Wenk [33,34] for planar quantum wires with a zinc-blende lattice. In our preceding article [14], we developed a model for diffusive zinc-blende nanowires where the transport is governed by surface states, which occurs in materials with Fermi level surface pinning [12,25,30,35,36] or core/shell nanowires [26].…”

Aharonov-Bohm oscillations and electron gas transitions in hexagonal core-shell nanowires with an axial magnetic field

“…In this context, InAs-based NWs offer privileged properties derived, for instance, from the light InAs electron effective mass, which enables the experimental observation of the subband spectrum quantization even in NWs of a relatively large section, [1][2][3] or from its large spin-orbit interaction and Landé factor [4,5]. This boosts their prospective applications in spintronics [6], even at relatively high temperature [7].…”

“…However, the experimental observations were analyzed in terms of simplified cylindrical electronic systems, and * mroyo@qfa.uji.es the potential induced by the back-gate voltage, which also removes the cylindrical symmetry, was neglected. Likewise, theoretical calculations dealing with radial electronic systems with an axial magnetic field usually assume a cylindrical symmetry [5,12,13,19,20]. Ferrari et al [10] investigated the effect of an axial magnetic field in prismatic systems, but the single-particle model adopted did not allow for a direct comparison with experiments.…”

Curvature induced out-of-plane spin accumulation in Rashba quantum waveguides

“…The eigenstates of a RSOI cylinder with a constant magnetic field perpendicular to the cylinder axis were later obtained numerically [8]. Spin precession on RSOI cylinders [9] and arbitrary one-dimensional paths on curved geometries [10,11] have also been studied. We have previously proposed the use of a finite-width semi-circular arc with RSOI to generate out of plane spin polarized currents [12].…”