Spin-orbit interaction and electron elastic scattering from impurities in quantum wells

We present a theoretical study of the spin-dependent scattering of electrons from screened impurities in III-V semiconductor quantum wells. Our calculation is based on the effective one-electronic-band Hamiltonian and the spin-orbit coupling with the Coulombic potential of the impurities. We demonstrate that the spin-orbit interaction can lead to recognizable magnitudes of spin asymmetry in the elastic-scattering cross section. Fairly large values of the Sherman function (about 0.01) are obtained for repulsive and attractive impurities in quantum wells of narrow gap semiconductors.