No Arabic abstract
We present a formalism that simultaneously incorporates the effect of quantum tunneling and spin diffusion on spin Hall magnetoresistance observed in normal metal/ferromagnetic insulator bilayers (such as Pt/YIG) and normal metal/ferromagnetic metal bilayers (such as Pt/Co), in which the angle of magnetization influences the magnetoresistance of the normal metal. In the normal metal side the spin diffusion is known to affect the landscape of the spin accumulation caused by spin Hall effect and subsequently the magnetoresistance, while on the ferromagnet side the quantum tunneling effect is detrimental to the interface spin current which also affects the spin accumulation. The influence of generic material properties such as spin diffusion length, layer thickness, interface coupling, and insulating gap can be quantified in a unified manner, and experiments that reveal the quantum feature of the magnetoresistance are suggested.
We study the influence of the phase relaxation process on Hall resistance and spin Hall current of a mesoscopic two-dimensional (2D) four-terminal Hall cross-bar with or without Rashba spin-orbit interaction (SOI) in a perpendicular uniform magnetic field. We find that the plateaus of the Hall resistance with even number of edge states can survive for very strong phase relaxation when the system size becomes much longer than the phase coherence length. On the other hand, the odd integer Hall resistance plateaus arising from the SOI are easily destroyed by the weak phase relaxation during the competition between the magnetic field and the SOI which delocalize the edge states. In addition, we have also studied the transverse spin Hall current and found that it exhibits resonant behavior whenever the Fermi level crosses the Landau band of the system. The phase relaxation process weakens the resonant spin Hall current and enhances the non-resonant spin Hall current.
We present a theory of the spin Hall magnetoresistance (SMR) in multilayers made from an insulating ferromagnet F, such as yttrium iron garnet (YIG), and a normal metal N with spin-orbit interactions, such as platinum (Pt). The SMR is induced by the simultaneous action of spin Hall and inverse spin Hall effects and therefore a non-equilibrium proximity phenomenon. We compute the SMR in F$|$N and F$|$N$|$F layered systems, treating N by spin-diffusion theory with quantum mechanical boundary conditions at the interfaces in terms of the spin-mixing conductance. Our results explain the experimentally observed spin Hall magnetoresistance in N$|$F bilayers. For F$|$N$|$F spin valves we predict an enhanced SMR amplitude when magnetizations are collinear. The SMR and the spin-transfer torques in these trilayers can be controlled by the magnetic configuration.
We demonstrate an electric-field control of tunneling magnetoresistance (TMR) effect in a semiconductor quantum-dot (QD) spin-valve device. By using ferromagnetic Ni nano-gap electrodes, we observe the Coulomb blockade oscillations at a small bias voltage. In the vicinity of the Coulomb blockade peak, the TMR effect is significantly modulated and even its sign is switched by changing the gate voltage, where the sign of the TMR value changes at the resonant condition.
Topological phases of matter have revolutionized quantum engineering. Implementing a curved space Dirac equation solver based on the quantum Lattice Boltzmann method, we study the topological and geometrical transport properties of a Mobius graphene ribbon. In the absence of a magnetic field, we measure a quantum spin-Hall current on the graphene strip, originating from topology and curvature, whereas a quantum Hall current is not observed. In the torus geometry a Hall current is measured. Additionally, a specific illustration of the equivalence between the Berry and Ricci curvature is presented through a travelling wave-packet around the Mobius band.
The effects of the spin-orbit interaction on the tunneling magnetoresistance of ferromagnet/semiconductor/normal metal tunnel junctions are investigated. Analytical expressions for the tunneling anisotropic magnetoresistance (TAMR) are derived within an approximation in which the dependence of the magnetoresistance on the magnetization orientation in the ferromagnet originates from the interference between Bychkov-Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit couplings that appear at junction interfaces and in the tunneling region. We also investigate the transport properties of ferromagnet/semiconductor/ferromagnet tunnel junctions and show that in such structures the spin-orbit interaction leads not only to the TAMR effect but also to the anisotropy of the conventional tunneling magnetoresistance (TMR). The resulting anisotropic tunneling magnetoresistance (ATMR) depends on the absolute magnetization directions in the ferromagnets. Within the proposed model, depending on the magnetization directions in the ferromagnets, the interplay of Bychkov-Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit couplings produces differences between the rates of transmitted and reflected spins at the ferromagnet/seminconductor interfaces, which results in an anisotropic local density of states at the Fermi surface and in the TAMR and ATMR effects. Model calculations for Fe/GaAs/Fe tunnel junctions are presented. Furthermore, based on rather general symmetry considerations, we deduce the form of the magnetoresistance dependence on the absolute orientations of the magnetizations in the ferromagnets.