Spin Hall effect of a conserved current: Conditions for a nonzero spin Hall current

2005/03/31 by Naoyuki Sugimoto, Shigeki Onoda, Shuichi Murakami +1 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Magnetic properties of thin films #Quantum and electron transport phenomena #Topological Materials and Phenomena #cond-mat.mes-hall

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevb.73.113305

published as Phys. Rev. B 73 113305 (2006) · 5 pages, minor change from the previous version

openalex publication_date 2006/03/08 · arxiv created 2006/05/11 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01

Abstract

We study the spin Hall effect taking into account the impurity scattering effect as general as possible with the focus on the definition of the spin current. The conserved bulk spin current (Zhang et al., cond-mat/0503505) satisfying the continuity equation of spin is considered in addition to the conventional one defined by the symmetric product of the spin and velocity operators. Conditions for nonzero spin Hall current are clarified. In particular, it is found that (i) the spin Hall current is nonzero in the Rashba model with a finite-range impurity potential, and (ii) the spin Hall current vanishes in the cubic Rashba model with a \ensuremathδ-function impurity potential.

Citations

• Spin Current and Polarization in Impure Two-Dimensional Electron Systems with Spin-Orbit Coupling
• Spin-Hall effect in a disordered two-dimensional electron system
• Observation of the Spin Hall Effect in Semiconductors
• Quantum field-theoretical methods in transport theory of metals
• Proper Definition of Spin Current in Spin-Orbit Coupled Systems
• Dissipationless Quantum Spin Current at Room Temperature

Cited by

• Spin Hall effect due to intersubband-induced spin-orbit interaction in symmetric quantum wells