2005/08/31 by Wei-Qiang Chen, W. Q. Chen, Zheng-Yu Weng +2
Physics and Astronomy · #Magnetic properties of thin films #Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism #Quantum and electron transport phenomena #cond-mat.dis-nn #cond-mat.mes-hall
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevb.72.235315
published as Physical Review B 72, 235315 (2005) · 9 pages, 11 figures; final version to appear in Phys. Rev. B
arxiv created 2005/10/26 · openalex publication_date 2005/12/13 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We present a numerical study of the spin Hall effect in a two-dimensional hole gas system in the presence of disorder. We find that the spin Hall conductance (SHC), extrapolated to the thermodynamic limit, remains finite in a wide range of disorder strengths for a closed system on torus. But there is no intrinsic spin Hall accumulation as induced by an external electric field once the disorder is turned on. The latter is examined by performing a Laughlin's Gedanken gauge experiment numerically with the adiabatic insertion of a flux quantum in a belt-shaped sample, in which the absence of level crossing is found under the disorder effect. Without disorder, on the other hand, energy levels do cross each other, which results in an oscillating spin-density modulation at the sample boundary after the insertion of one flux quantum in the belt-shaped system. But the corresponding net spin transfer is only about one order of magnitude smaller than what is expected from the bulk SHC. These apparently contradictory results can be attributed to the violation of the spin conservation law in such a system. We also briefly address the dissipative Fermi surface contribution to spin polarization, which may be relevant to experimental measurements.