Absence of thermospin current response of a spin-orbit-coupled two-dimensional electron gas

Abstract

We consider the spin current flowing in a two-dimensional electron gas with Rashba and linear Dresselhaus spin-orbit interaction as a linear response to a temperature gradient, taking into account the contribution due to the thermoelectric effect. We derive a relation connecting the electrically and thermally driven spin and charge conductivities, for the Hamiltonians corresponding to samples grown in the main crystallographic directions. Based on this connection, it is shown that the transverse and longitudinal spin currents generated by the temperature gradient vanish exactly for each spin-orbit Hamiltonian case. This result is in contrast to the recently predicted finite thermospin Hall effect for such class of systems.