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Register a new userWeak Antilocalization and Spin Precession in Quantum Wells
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The results of magnetoconductivity measurements in GaInAs quantum wells are presented. The observed magnetoconductivity appears due to the quantum interference, which lead to the weak localization effect. It is established that the details of the weak localization are controlled by the spin splitting of electron spectra. A theory is developed which takes into account both linear and cubic in electron wave vector terms in spin splitting, which arise due to the lack of inversion center in the crystal, as well as the linear terms which appear when the well itself is asymmetric. It is established that, unlike spin relaxation rate, contributions of different terms into magnetoconductivity are not additive. It is demonstrated that in the interval of electron densities under investigation (0.98-1.85)*10^(12) 1/cm^2 all three contribution are comparable and have to be taken into account to achieve a good agreement between the theory and experiment. The results obtained from comparison of the experiment and the theory have allowed us to determine what mechanisms dominate the spin relaxation in quantum wells and to improve the accuracy of determination of spin splitting parameters in A3B5 crystals and 2D structures.
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Spin-orbit (SO) interactions give a spin-dependent correction r_so to the position operator, referred to as the anomalous position operator. We study the contributions of r_so to the spin-Hall effect (SHE) in quasi two-dimensional (2D) semiconductor quantum wells with strong band structure SO interactions that cause spin precession. The skew scattering and side-jump scattering terms in the SHE vanish, but we identify two additional terms in the SHE, due to r_so, which have not been considered in the literature so far. One term reflects the modification of the spin precession due to the action of the external electric field (the field drives the current in the quantum well), which produces, via r_so, an effective magnetic field perpendicular to the plane of the quantum well. The other term reflects a similar modification of the spin precession due to the action of the electric field created by random impurities, and appears in a careful formulation of the Born approximation. We refer to these two effects collectively as anomalous spin precession and we note that they contribute to the SHE to the first order in the SO coupling constant even though they formally appear to be of second order. In electron systems with weak momentum scattering, the contribution of the anomalous spin precession due to the external electric field equals 1/2 the usual side-jump SHE, while the additional impurity-dependent contribution depends on the form of the band structure SO coupling. For band structure SO linear in wave vector the two additional contributions cancel. For band structure SO cubic in wave vector only the contribution due to external electric field is present, and can be detected through its density dependence. In 2D hole systems both anomalous spin precession contributions vanish identically.
The results of experimental study of interference induced magnetoconductivity in narrow HgTe quantum wells of hole-type conductivity with a normal energy spectrum are presented. Interpretation of the data is performed with taking into account the strong spin-orbit splitting of the energy spectrum of the two-dimensional hole subband. It is shown that the phase relaxation time found from the analysis of the shape of magnetoconductivity curves for the relatively low conductivity when the Fermi level lies in the monotonic part of the energy spectrum of the valence band behaves itself analogously to that observed in narrow HgTe quantum wells of electron-type conductivity. It increases in magnitude with the increasing conductivity and decreasing temperature following the $1/T$ law. Such a behavior corresponds to the inelasticity of electron-electron interaction as the main mechanism of the phase relaxation and agrees well with the theoretical predictions. For the higher conductivity, despite the fact that the dephasing time remains inversely proportional to the temperature, it strongly decreases with the increasing conductivity. It is presumed that a nonmonotonic character of the hole energy spectrum could be the reason for such a peculiarity. An additional channel of the inelastic interaction between the carriers in the main and secondary maxima occurs when the Fermi level arrives the secondary maxima in the depth of the valence.
We report the measurements and analysis of weak antilocalization (WAL) in Pb1-xSnxSe topological quantum wells in a new regime where the elastic scattering length is larger than the magnetic length. We achieve this regime through the development of high-quality epitaxy and doping of topological crystalline insulator (TCI) quantum wells. We obtain elastic scattering lengths that exceeds 100nm and become comparable to the magnetic length. In this transport regime, the Hikami-Larkin-Nagaoka model is no longer valid. We employ the model of Wittmann and Schmid to extract the coherence time from the magnetoresistance. We find that despite our improved transport characteristics, the coherence time may be limited by scattering channels that are not strongly carrier dependent, such as electron-phonon or defect scattering.
Topological materials have attracted considerable experimental and theoretical attention. They exhibit strong spin-orbit coupling both in the band structure (intrinsic) and in the impurity potentials (extrinsic), although the latter is often neglected. Here we discuss weak localization and antilocalization of massless Dirac fermions in topological insulators and massive Dirac fermions in Weyl semimetal thin films taking into account both intrinsic and extrinsic spin-orbit interactions. The physics is governed by the complex interplay of the chiral spin texture, quasiparticle mass, and scalar and spin-orbit scattering. We demonstrate that terms linear in the extrinsic spin-orbit scattering are generally present in the Bloch and momentum relaxation times in all topological materials, and the correction to the diffusion constant is linear in the strength of the extrinsic spin-orbit. In TIs, which have zero quasiparticle mass, the terms linear in the impurity spin-orbit coupling lead to an observable density dependence in the weak antilocalization correction. They produce substantial qualitative modifications to the magnetoconductivity, differing greatly from the conventional HLN formula traditionally used in experimental fits, which predicts a crossover from weak localization to antilocalization as a function of the extrinsic spin-orbit strength. In contrast, our analysis reveals that topological insulators always exhibit weak antilocalization. In WSM thin films having intermediate to large values of the quasiparticle mass extrinsic spin-orbit scattering strongly affects the boundary of the weak localization to antilocalization transition. We produce a complete phase diagram for this transition as a function of the mass and spin-orbit scattering strength. We discuss implications for experiments and provide a brief comparison with transition metal dichalcogenides.
The results of experimental study of the magnetoconductivity of 2D electron gas caused by suppression of the interference quantum correction in HgTe single quantum well heterostructure with the inverted energy spectrum are presented. It is shown that only the antilocalization magnetoconductivity is observed at the relatively high conductivity $sigma>(20-30)G_0$, where $G_0= e^2/2pi^2hbar$. The antilocalization correction demonstrates a crossover from $0.5ln{(tau_phi/tau)}$ to $1.0ln{(tau_phi/tau)}$ behavior with the increasing conductivity or decreasing temperature (here $tau_phi$ and $tau$ are the phase relaxation and transport relaxation times, respectively). It is interpreted as a result of crossover to the regime when the two chiral branches of the electron energy spectrum contribute to the weak antilocalization independently. At lower conductivity $sigma<(20-30)G_0$, the magnetoconductivity behaves itself analogously to that in usual 2D systems with the fast spin relaxation: being negative in low magnetic field it becomes positive in higher one. We have found that the temperature dependences of the fitting parameter $tau_phi$ corresponding to the phase relaxation time demonstrate reasonable behavior, close to 1/T, over the whole conductivity range from $5G_0$ up to $130G_0$. However, the $tau_phi$ value remains practically independent of the conductivity in distinction to the conventional 2D systems with the simple energy spectrum, in which $tau_phi$ is enhanced with the conductivity.
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