Unconventional dc Transport in Rashba Electron Gases

Valentina Brosco, Lara Benfatto, Emmanuele Cappelluti, and Claudio Grimaldi
Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 166602 – Published 20 April 2016
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Abstract

We discuss the transport properties of a disordered two-dimensional electron gas with strong Rashba spin-orbit coupling. We show that in the high-density regime where the Fermi energy overcomes the energy associated with spin-orbit coupling, dc transport is accurately described by a standard Drude’s law, due to a nontrivial compensation between the suppression of backscattering and the relativistic correction to the quasiparticle velocity. On the contrary, when the system enters the opposite dominant spin-orbit regime, Drude’s paradigm breaks down and the dc conductivity becomes strongly sensitive to the spin-orbit coupling strength, providing a suitable tool to test the entanglement between spin and charge degrees of freedom in these systems.

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  • Received 27 November 2015

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.166602

© 2016 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Condensed Matter, Materials & Applied Physics

Authors & Affiliations

Valentina Brosco1, Lara Benfatto1, Emmanuele Cappelluti1, and Claudio Grimaldi2

  • 1ISC-CNR and Department of Physics, Sapienza University of Rome, Piazzale Aldo Moro 2, 00185 Rome, Italy
  • 2Laboratory of Physics of Complex Matter, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Station 3, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland

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Issue

Vol. 116, Iss. 16 — 22 April 2016

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