Spin Aharonov-Bohm effect and topological spin transistor

Joseph Maciejko, Eun-Ah Kim, and Xiao-Liang Qi
Phys. Rev. B 82, 195409 – Published 4 November 2010

Abstract

Ever since its discovery, the electron spin has only been measured or manipulated through the application of an electromagnetic force acting on the associated magnetic moment. In this work, we propose a spin Aharonov-Bohm effect in which the electron spin is controlled by a magnetic flux while no electromagnetic field is acting on the electron. Such a nonlocal spin manipulation is realized in an Aharonov-Bohm ring made from the recently discovered quantum spin Hall insulator, by taking advantage of the defining property of the quantum spin Hall edge states: the one-to-one correspondence between spin polarization and direction of propagation. The proposed setup can be used to realize a new spintronics device, the topological spin transistor, in which the spin rotation is completely controlled by a magnetic flux of hc/2e, independently of the details of the sample.

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  • Received 25 September 2009

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.82.195409

©2010 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Joseph Maciejko1,2, Eun-Ah Kim3, and Xiao-Liang Qi1,2

  • 1Department of Physics, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA
  • 2Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, California 94025, USA
  • 3Department of Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853, USA

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Issue

Vol. 82, Iss. 19 — 15 November 2010

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