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 and size . The resultant spin-Hall angle has a fixed sign, with being a strongly dependent function of the Fermi wave vector () and Fermi velocity (). Hence, the SHE can be tuned by adjusting the Fermi energy or impurity size.
- Received 25 October 2017
- Revised 19 April 2018
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.066603
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