No Arabic abstract
We discuss in details the electron scattering pattern on skyrmion-like magnetic textures in two-dimensional geometry. The special attention is focused on analyzing the scattering asymmetry, which is a precursor of the topological Hall effect. We present analytical results valid for the limiting regimes of strong and weak coupling, we also describe the numerical scheme that gives access to the exact solution of the scattering problem. Based on the numerical computations we investigate the properties of the asymmetric scattering for an arbitrary magnitude of the interaction strength and the topology of a magnetic texture. We analyze in details the conditions when the topological charge of a magnetic texture is indeed essential for the appearance of the Hall response. We also describe how the electron scattering asymmetry is modified due to an additional short-range impurity located inside a magnetic skyrmion.
We develop a microscopic theory of spin relaxation of a two-dimensional electron gas in quantum wells with anisotropic electron scattering. Both precessional and collision-dominated regimes of spin dynamics are studied. It is shown that, in quantum wells with noncentrosymmetric scatterers, the in-plane and out-of-plane spin components are coupled: spin dephasing of carriers initially polarized along the quantum well normal leads to the emergence of an in-plane spin component even in the case of isotropic spin-orbit splitting. In the collision-dominated regime, the spin-relaxation-rate tensor is expressed in terms of the electric conductivity tensor. We also study the effect of an in-plane and out-of-plane external magnetic field on spin dephasing and show that the field dependence of electron spin can be very intricate.
We have studied experimentally and theoretically the influence of electron-electron collisions on the propagation of electron beams in a two-dimensional electron gas for excess injection energies ranging from zero up to the Fermi energy. We find that the detector signal consists of quasiballistic electrons, which either have not undergone any electron-electron collisions or have only been scattered at small angles. Theoretically, the small-angle scattering exhibits distinct features that can be traced back to the reduced dimensionality of the electron system. A number of nonlinear effects, also related to the two-dimensional character of the system, are discussed. In the simplest situation, the heating of the electron gas by the high-energy part of the beam leads to a weakening of the signal of quasiballistic electrons and to the appearance of thermovoltage. This results in a nonmonotonic dependence of the detector signal on the intensity of the injected beam, as observed experimentally.
Theory of interference-induced quantum corrections to conductivity is developed for two dimensional systems with chiral spin textures including skyrmions. The effect of exchange interaction between electrons and spin textures on weak localization of electronic waves is studied. The spin dephasing rates are calculated as functions of the spin texture size. The anomalous magnetoresistance is shown to be governed by the size and magnetization spatial distribution of the spin textures. The effect of average magnetization-induced spin splitting on weak localization is analyzed. The sign-alternating weak-antilocalization magnetoresistance is demonstrated for skyrmion crystals. We argue that analysis of the low-field magnetoresistance serves as an independent tool for an experimental detection of chiral spin textures and, in particular, skyrmions.
Using scanning gate microscopy (SGM), we probe the scattering between a beam of electrons and a two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) as a function of the beams injection energy, and distance from the injection point. At low injection energies, we find electrons in the beam scatter by small-angles, as has been previously observed. At high injection energies, we find a surprising result: placing the SGM tip where it back-scatters electrons increases the differential conductance through the system. This effect is explained by a non-equilibrium distribution of electrons in a localized region of 2DEG near the injection point. Our data indicate that the spatial extent of this highly non-equilibrium distribution is within ~1 micrometer of the injection point. We approximate the non-equilibrium region as having an effective temperature that depends linearly upon injection energy.
We investigate the dynamics of a two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) under circular polarized microwave radiation in presence of dilute localized impurities. Inspired by recent developments on Floquet topological insulators we obtain the Floquet wavefunctions of this system which allow us to predict the microwave absorption and charge density responses of the electron gas, we demonstrate how these properties can be understood from the underlying semiclassical dynamics even for impurities with a size of around a magnetic length. The charge density response takes the form of a rotating charge density vortex around the impurity that can lead to a significant renormalization of the external microwave field which becomes strongly inhomogeneous on the scale of a cyclotron radius around the impurity. We show that this in-homogeneity can suppress the circular polarization dependence which is theoretically expected for MIRO but which was not observed in MIRO experiments on semiconducting 2DEGs. Our explanation, for this so far unexplained polarization independence, has close similarities with the Azbel-Kaner effect in metals where the interaction length between the microwave field and conduction electrons is much smaller than the cyclotron radius due to skin effect generating harmonics of the cyclotron resonance.