Spin Transport and Accumulation in a 2D Weyl Fermion System

T. Tzen Ong and Naoto Nagaosa
Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 066603 – Published 7 August 2018
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Abstract

In this work, we demonstrate a new route to realizing an experimentally controllable spin-Hall effect (SHE), on the surface of 3D topological insulators, which depends fundamentally on the spin-orbit-coupled (SOC) nature of the 2D Weyl fermions. Spin transport is solely due to the spin-torque current in this system, and the SHE arises from chiral spin-flip scattering off non-SOC scalar impurities, of potential strength V and size a. The resultant spin-Hall angle has a fixed sign, with θSHO{[V2]/[vF2/a2](kFa)4} being a strongly dependent function of the Fermi wave vector (kF) and Fermi velocity (vF). Hence, the SHE can be tuned by adjusting the Fermi energy or impurity size.

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  • Received 25 October 2017
  • Revised 19 April 2018

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.066603

© 2018 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Condensed Matter, Materials & Applied Physics

Authors & Affiliations

T. Tzen Ong and Naoto Nagaosa

  • RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science (CEMS), Saitama 351-0198, Japan and Department of Applied Physics, University of Tokyo, Tokyo 113-8656, Japan

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Issue

Vol. 121, Iss. 6 — 10 August 2018

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