Hydrodynamic theory of vorticity-induced spin transport

Abstract

Electron spin transport in a disordered metal is theoretically studied from the hydrodynamic viewpoint focusing on the role of electron vorticity. The spin-resolved momentum flux density of electrons is calculated taking account of the spin-orbit interaction and uniform magnetization, and the expression for the spin motive force is obtained as the linear response to a driving electric field. It is shown that the spin-resolved momentum flux density and motive force are characterized by troidal moments expressed as vector products of the applied external electric field and the spin polarization and/or magnetization. The spin-vorticity and magnetization-vorticity couplings studied recently are shown to arise from the toridal moments contribution to the momentum flux density. Spin motive force turns out to have a nonconservative contribution besides the conventional conservative one due to the spin-vorticity coupling. Spin accumulation induced by an electric field is calculated to demonstrate the direct relation between vorticity and induced spin, and the spin Hall effect is interpreted as due to the spin-vorticity coupling. The spin-vorticity coupling is shown to give rise to a vorticity-induced torque and a spin relaxation. The vorticity-induced torque is a linear effect of the spin-orbit interaction and is expected to be larger than the second-order torques such as nonadiabatic ($\beta$) current-induced torque due to magnetization structure. The intrinsic inverse spin Hall effect is argued to correspond to the antisymmetric components of the momentum flux density in the hydrodynamic context.