2017/09/30 by Michael Kammermeier, Paul Wenk, John Schliemann +3 · 1 citation
Engineering · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Advancements in Semiconductor Devices and Circuit Design #Condensed matter physics #Coupling (piping) #Electron #Electronic and Structural Properties of Oxides #Materials science #Nanotechnology #Nanowire #Optoelectronics #Physics #Quantum and electron transport phenomena #Quantum wire #RADIUS #Relaxation (psychology) #Semiconductor #Spin (aerodynamics) #Spin polarization #Spin–orbit interaction #cond-mat.mes-hall
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevb.96.235302
published as Phys. Rev. B 96, 235302 (2017) · 11 pages, 5 figures, to be published in Phys. Rev. B
arxiv created 2017/12/01 · openalex publication_date 2017/12/06 · arxiv updated 2017/12/07 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We study the effects of spin-orbit coupling on the magnetoconductivity in diffusive cylindrical semiconductor nanowires. Following up on our former study on tubular semiconductor nanowires, we focus in this paper on nanowire systems where no surface accumulation layer is formed but instead the electron wave function extends over the entire cross section. We take into account the Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling resulting from a zinc-blende lattice and the Rashba spin-orbit coupling, which is controlled by a lateral gate electrode. The spin relaxation rate due to Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling is found to depend neither on the spin density component nor on the wire growth direction and is unaffected by the radial boundary. In contrast, the Rashba spin relaxation rate is strongly reduced for a wire radius that is smaller than the spin precession length. The derived model is fitted to the data of magnetoconductance measurements of a heavily doped back-gated InAs nanowire and transport parameters are extracted. At last, we compare our results to previous theoretical and experimental studies and discuss the occurring discrepancies.