Generating spin currents in semiconductors with the spin Hall effect

We investigate electrically induced spin currents generated by the spin Hall effect in GaAs structures that distinguish edge effects from spin transport. Using Kerr rotation microscopy to image the spin polarization, we demonstrate that the observed spin accumulation is due to a transverse bulk electron spin current, which can drive spin polarization nearly 40 microns into a region in which there is minimal electric field. Using a model that incorporates the effects of spin drift, we determine the transverse spin drift velocity from the magnetic field dependence of the spin polarization.     

Spin-Filter Effect Induced by Magnetic Edge States of Zigzag Carbon Nanotube

Spin-filter effect is predicted in a weak coupled junction composed of a nonmagnetic metal electrode and a zigzag carbon nanotube. This effect is induced by the magnetic edge states of the nanotube, and can produce spin- polarized current in the absence of an external magnetic field. We find that the spin polarization of the current changes its sign at the half-filling point of the nanotube, thus electric field control of spin transport can be realized. Furthermore, we find the coupling strength of the junction may cause a magnetic transition on the edge of the nanotube.     

Electrical detection of spin accumulation at a ferromagnet-semiconductor interface

We show that the accumulation of spin-polarized electrons at a forward-biased Schottky tunnel barrier between Fe and -GaAs can be detected electrically. The spin accumulation leads to an additional voltage drop across the barrier that is suppressed by a small transverse magnetic field, which depolarizes the spins in the semiconductor. The dependence of the electrical accumulation signal on magnetic field, bias current, and temperature is in good agreement with the predictions of a drift-diffusion model for spin-polarized transport.     

Controllable Spin-Polarized Transport in a Three-Terminal Model

By means of the Keldysh Green's function method, we investigate the spin-polarized electron transport in a three-terminal device, which is composed of three normal metal leads and two serially-coupled quantum dots (QDs). The Rashba spin-orbit interaction (RSOI) is also considered in one of the QDs. We show that the spin-polarized charge current with arbitrary spin polarization can be obtained because of the quantum spin interference effect arising from the Rashba spin precession phase, and it can be modulated by the system parameters such as the applied external voltages, the RSOI strength, the QD levels, as well as the dot-lead coupling strengths. Moreover, a fully spin-polarized current or a pure spin current without any accompanying charge current can also be controlled to flow in the system. Our findings indicate that the proposed model can serve as an all-electrical spin device in spintronics field.     

Spin filtering in a nonuniform quantum wire with Rashba spin-orbit interaction

We investigate theoretically the spin-polarized electron transport for a wide-narrow-wide (WNW) quantum wire under the modulation of Rashba spin-orbit interaction (SOI). The influence of both the structure of the quantum wire and the interference between different pairs of subbands on the spin-polarized electron transport is taken into account simultaneously via the spin-resolved lattice Green function method. It is found that a very large vertical spin-polarized current can be generated by the SOI-induced effective magnetic field at the structure-induced Fano resonance even in the presence of strong disorder. Furthermore, the magnitude of the spin polarization can be tuned by the Rashba SOI strength and structural parameters. Those results may provide an effective way to design a spin filter device without containing any magnetic materials or applying a magnetic field.     

Effects of Rashba spin–orbit coupling and a magnetic field on a polygonal quantum ring

Using standard quantum network method, we analytically investigate the effect of Rashba spin–orbit coupling (RSOC) and a magnetic field on the spin transport properties of a polygonal quantum ring. Using Landauer–Büttiker formula, we have found that the polarization direction and phase of transmitted electrons can be controlled by both the magnetic field and RSOC. A device to generate a spin-polarized conductance in a polygon with an arbitrary number of sides is discussed. This device would permit precise control of spin and selectively provide spin filtering for either spin up or spin down simply by interchanging the source and drain.     

GaMnN铁磁共振隧穿二极管自旋电流输运以及极化效应的影响

通过理论计算研究GaMnN铁磁共振隧穿二极管自旋电流输运特性.理论结果表明在电流特性曲线上出现两个明显的自旋分裂峰.该电流自旋分裂峰和相应的自旋极化随温度的升高而逐渐减小消失.当进一步考虑到GaN异质结界面极化电荷影响时,自旋向下的电流共振峰得到明显增强,同时电流的自旋极化也得到相应的提高.在一定的极化电荷条件下,可以获得较高的自旋极化电流. 关键词： GaMnN 共振隧穿 自旋电流 极化电荷     

Spin-dependent quantum transport through an Aharonov--Bohm structure spin splitter

Using the tight-binding model approximation, this paper investigates theoretically spin-dependent quantum transport through an Aharonov-Bohm （AB） interferometer. An external magnetic field is applied to produce the spinpolarization and spin current. The AB interferometer, acting as a spin splitter, separates the opposite spin polarization current. By adjusting the energy and the direction of the magnetic field, large spin-polarized current can be obtained.     

Photocurrent spin diode: Electrically controlled sign reversal of current polarization

We report a study of spin-dependent transport through a quantum dot irradiated by continuous circularly polarized light resonant to the electron-heavy hole transition. We use the nonequilibrium Green's function to calculate the spin accumulation, spin-resolved currents, and current polarization in the presence of an external bias and intradot Coulomb interaction. It is found that for a range of external biases sign reversal of the current polarization can be modulated. The system thus operates as a rectifier for spin current polarization. This effect follows from the interplay between the external irradiation and the Coulomb repulsion. The spin-polarized transport through a three-terminal device is also discussed. Spin current with high polarization could be obtained due to spin filter effect.     

Coherence control of Hall charge and spin currents

Using two-color optical coherence control techniques in intrinsic GaAs at 80 K with orthogonally polarized 70 fs, 1430 and 715 nm pulses, we generate a pure spin source current that yields a transverse Hall pure charge current; or alternatively, with parallel polarized pulses, we generate a pure charge source current that yields a pure spin current. By varying the relative phase or polarization of the incident pulses, one can effectively tune the type, magnitude and direction of both the source and transverse currents without application of electric or magnetic fields.     

Berry-phase blockade in single-molecule magnets

We formulate the problem of electron transport through a single-molecule magnet (SMM) in the Coulomb blockade regime taking into account topological interference effects for the tunneling of the large spin of a SMM. The interference originates from spin Berry phases associated with different tunneling paths. We show that, in the case of incoherent spin states, it is essential to place the SMM between oppositely spin-polarized source and drain leads in order to detect the spin tunneling in the stationary current, which exhibits topological zeros as a function of the transverse magnetic field.     

Circularly polarized light stimulation of spin transport in zinc-blende semiconductors

An experimental and theoretical study on the optically stimulated spin transport in zinc-blende semiconductors is presented. The first part of the paper describes an experiment which investigates the effect of a longitudinal electric field on the spin-polarized carriers induced by a circularly polarized light. Since the photo-generated hole spins relaxation is extremely fast, the experiment observes only the effect resulting from spin-polarized electrons accumulating at the transverse edges of the sample, as a result of left-right asymmetries in scattering for spin-up and spin-down electrons in the presence of spin–orbit (SO) interaction. It is found that the effect depends on the longitudinal electric field and doping density as well as on temperature. The results are discussed. The second part of the paper deals with a theoretical investigation using norm-conserving pseudopotential and Green function formalism to analyse the SO mechanism responsible for the light-induced Hall voltage. The findings resulting from the investigation are discussed and are compared with experimental data.     

Spin-polarized tunneling in a ferromagnetic graphene junction: Interplay between the exchange interaction and the orbital effect of the magnetic field

The influence of magnetic vector potential barrier (MVPB) on the spin-polarized transport of massless Dirac particles in ferromagnetic graphene is studied theoretically. The phenomenon of Klein tunneling of relativistic particles across a rectangular potential barrier prevents any of the massless fermions from being confined but they can be electrically confined by quantum dots with integrable dynamics (Bardarson et al., 2009) [36]. Utilization of only the in-plane exchange splitting in the ferromagnetic graphene cannot produce 100% spin polarization. This tunneling can be confined using the magnetic vector potential barrier, which leads to high degree of spin polarization. By combining the orbital effect and the Zeeman interaction in graphene junction, it is found that the junction mimics behavior of half-metallic tunneling junction, in which it acts as a metal to particles of one spin orientation but as an insulator or a semiconductor to those of the opposite orientation. The idea of the half-metallic tunneling junction can provide a source of ∼100% spin-polarized current, which is potentially very useful. Adjustment of the position of the Fermi level in ferromagnetic layer by placing a gate voltage on top of the ferromagnetic layer shows that reverse of the orientation of the completely spin-polarized current passing through the junction is controlled by adjusting the gate voltage. These interesting characteristics should lead to a practical gate voltage controlled spin filtering and spin-polarized switching devices as a perfect spin-polarized electron source for graphene-based spintronics.     

Magnetic Field Effects on Quantum-Dot Spin Valves

We study the magnetic field effects on the spin-polarized transport of the quantum dot (QD) spin valve in the sequential tunneling regime. A set of generalized master equation is derived. Based on that, we discuss the collinear and noncollinear magnetic field effects, respectively. In the collinear magnetic field case,we find that the Zeeman splitting can induce a negative differential conductance (NDC), which is quite different from the one found in previous studies. It has a critical polarization in the parallel arrangement and will disappear in the antiparallelconfiguration. In the noncollinear magnetic field case, the current shows two plateaus and their angular dependence is analyzed. Although sometimes the two current plateaus have similar angular dependence, their mechanisms are different. Our formalism is also suitable for calculating the transport in magnetic molecules, in which the spin splitting is induced not by a magnetic field but by the intrinsic magnetization.     

Spin injection into semiconductors using dilute magnetic semiconductors

So far, attempts at realizing spin-polarized current injection into a semiconductor using metallic ferromagnetic contacts have yielded unsatisfying results. In this paper, we present a simple model of diffusive transport, which shows that the principle reason for these negative results is a conductivity mismatch between the ferromagnetic contacts and the semiconductor. Moreover, we demonstrate that this problem can be addressed by using dilute magnetic semiconductor (DMS) contacts instead of metallic contacts. We present experimental results of optical measurements on a GaAs/AlGaAs diode fitted with a DMS spin injector contact. These measurements show a spin polarization of around 90% in the semiconductor. Furthermore, we discuss a novel magnetoresistance effect based on the suppression of one of the spin channels in the semiconductor which should allow the detection of a spin-polarized current by magnetoresistance measurements.     

Spin-polarized transport in one-dimensional waveguide structures with spatially-periodic electronic and magnetic fields

We investigate theoretically the spin-polarized transport in one-dimensional waveguide structure with spatially-periodic electronic and magnetic fields. The interplay of the spin-orbit interaction and in-plane magnetic field significantly modifies the spin-dependent transmission and the spin polarization. The in-plane magnetic fields increase the strength of the Rashba spin-orbit coupling effect for the electric fields along y axis and decrease this effect for reversing the electric fields, even counteract the Rashba spin-orbit coupling effect. It is very interesting to find that we may deduce the strength of the Rashba effect through this phenomenon.     

The effects of electric and magnetic fields on the current spin polarization and magnetoresistance in a ferromagnetic/organic semiconductor/ferromagnetic（FM/OSC/FM） system

From experimental results of spin polarized injection and transport in organic semiconductors(OSCs),we theoretically study the current spin polarization and magnetoresistance under an electric and a magnetic field in a ferromagnetic/organic semiconductor/ferromagnetic(FM/OSC/FM) sandwich structure according to the spin drift-diffusion theory and Ohm’s law.From the calculations,it is found that the interfacial current spin polarization is enhanced by several orders of magnitude through tuning the magnetic and electric fields by taking into account the specific characteristics of OSC.Furthermore,the effects of the electric and magnetic fields on the magnetoresistance are also discussed in the sandwich structure.     

Depolarization of the photoluminescence and spin relaxation in n-doped GaAs

Optically oriented electron spin lifetime in n-doped gallium arsenide was measured via depolarization of the photoluminescence (PL) in a transverse magnetic field (Hanle effect). In order to measure the PL polarization, a time-resolved pump-probe experiment, where a pump pulse generates spin-polarized electrons and a probe pulse monitors their polarization, was employed. The PL polarization in dependences of the pump-probe delay, external magnetic field as well as of the sample temperature was studied. The PL polarization was found to decay exponentially with the pump-probe delay, from which the spin lifetime of the electrons was measured. The measured value was found to depend on the strength of the magnetic field and sample temperature.     

Spin and Majorana polarization in topological superconducting wires

We study a one-dimensional wire with strong Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling (SOC), which supports Majorana fermions when subject to a Zeeman magnetic field and in the proximity of a superconductor. Using both analytical and numerical techniques we calculate the electronic spin texture of the Majorana end states. We find that the spin polarization of these states depends on the relative magnitude of the Rashba and Dresselhaus SOC components. Moreover, we define and calculate a local "Majorana polarization" and "Majorana density" and argue that they can be used as order parameters to characterize the topological transition between the trivial system and the system exhibiting Majorana bound modes. We find that the local Majorana polarization is correlated to the transverse spin polarization, and we propose to test the presence of Majorana fermions in a 1D system by a spin-polarized density of states measurement.     

The effects of Mn concentration on spin-polarized transport through ZnSe/ZnMnSe/ZnSe heterostructures

We have studied the effects of Mn concentration on the ballistic spin-polarized transport through diluted magnetic semiconductor heterostructures with a single paramagnetic layer. Using a fitted function for zero-field conduction band offset based on the experimental data, we found that the spin current densities strongly depend on the Mn concentration. The magnitude as well as the sign of the electron-spin polarization and the tunnel magnetoresistance can be tuned by varying the Mn concentration, the width of the paramagnetic layer, and the external magnetic field. By an appropriate choice of the Mn concentration and the width of the paramagnetic layer, the degree of spin polarization for the output current can reach 100% and the device can be used as a spin filter.