2026/07/22 by Börge Göbel, Tom G. Saunderson, Freia Opfermann +3
#cond-mat.mes-hall #cond-mat.str-el
Spin-momentum locking is widely regarded as a hallmark of relativistic spin-orbit coupling. Here we demonstrate analytically that it can instead emerge solely from magnetic chirality. Solving the minimal tight-binding model of electrons coupled to a spin spiral using a generalized Bloch theorem, we show that the spiral generates chirality-dependent p-wave magnetism characterized by the antisymmetric spin texture \boldsymbols(\boldsymbolk)=-\boldsymbols(-\boldsymbolk). The exact solution further yields closed-form expressions for the electrical conductivity and the spin Edelstein susceptibility, revealing a microscopic mechanism by which magnetic chirality alone can generate spin polarization without spin-orbit coupling, with direct implications also for chirality-induced spin selectivity. In the strong exchange-coupling regime, the spin-dependent physics of the spin spiral becomes directly analogous to the orbital-dependent physics of electrons propagating through a non-magnetic helix. Our work establishes a minimal exactly solvable model of chirality-induced spin-momentum locking and spin-charge conversion beyond the conventional spin-orbit coupled paradigm.