Aharonov–Bohm Interferometry Based on Helical Edge States (Brief Review)

JETP Letters - We review recent studies of the spin-dependent tunneling transport via an Aharonov–Bohm interferometer (ABI) formed by helical edge states. We focus on the experimentally...     

Spin dynamics in the regime of hopping conductivity

Spin dynamics in the impurity band of a semiconductor with the spin-split spectrum is considered. Due to the splitting, phonon-assisted hops from one impurity to another axe accompanied by rotation of the electron spin, which leads to spin relaxation. The system is strongly inhomogeneous because of exponential variation of hopping times. However, at very small coupling an electron diffuses over a distance exceeding the characteristic scale of the inhomogeneity during the time of spin relaxation, so one can introduce an averaged spin relaxation rate. At larger values of coupling, the system is effectively divided into two subsystems: one where relaxation is very fast and another where relaxation is rather slow. In this case, spin decays due to the escape of the electrons from one subsystem to another. As a result, the spin dynamics is nonexponential and hardly depends on spin-orbit coupling. The text was submitted by the authors in English.     

Tunneling into a Luttinger liquid revisited

We study how electron-electron interactions renormalize tunneling into a Luttinger liquid beyond the lowest order of perturbation in the tunneling amplitude. We find that the conventional fixed point has a finite basin of attraction only in the point contact model, but a finite size of the contact makes it generically unstable to the tunneling-induced breakup of the liquid into two independent parts. In the course of renormalization to the nonperturbative-in-tunneling fixed point, the tunneling conductance may show a nonmonotonic behavior with temperature or bias voltage.     

Hanle effect driven by weak localization

The influence of weak localization on the Hanle effect in a two-dimensional system with a spin-split spectrum is considered. We show that weak localization drastically changes the dependence of a stationary spin polarization S on an external magnetic field B. In particular, the nonanalytic dependence of S on B is predicted for III-V-based quantum wells grown in the [110] direction and for the [100]-grown quantum wells having equal strengths of Dresselhaus and Bychkov-Rashba spin-orbit coupling. It is shown that in a weakly localized regime the components of S are discontinuous at B = 0. At low B, the magnetic field-induced rotation of the stationary polarization is determined by quantum interference effects. This implies that the Hanle effect in such systems is totally driven by weak localization.     

Quantum corrections to the conductivity in systems with strong spin-orbit splitting of the spectrum

Quantum corrections to the conductivity in a 2D system with a smooth random potential and strong spin-orbit splitting of the spectrum are studied. It is shown that the interference correction is positive and, right down to very low temperatures, does not exceed in magnitude the negative correction due to the electron-electron interaction. Pis’ma Zh. éksp. Teor. Fiz. 68, No. 4, 314–319 (25 August 1998)