Impact of the p-cubic Dresselhaus term on the spin Hall effect

Abstract

It is well known that the Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling (SOC) in semiconductor two dimensional electron gases (2DEGs) possesses both linear and cubic in momentum contributions. Nevertheless, the latter is usually neglected in most theoretical studies. However, recent Kerr rotation experiments have revealed a significant enhancement of the cubic Dresselhaus interaction by increasing the drift velocities in 2DEGs hosted in GaAs quantum wells. Here, we present a study of the optical spin Hall conductivity in 2DEGs under the simultaneous presence of Rashba and (linear plus cubic) Dresselhaus SOC. The work was done within the Kubo formalism in linear response. We show that the coexistence of the Rashba and cubic Dresselhaus SOC in 2DEGs promotes a strong anisotropy of the band spin splitting which in turn leads to a very characteristic frequency dependence of the spin Hall conductivity. We find that the spin Hall conductivity response could be very sensible to sizeable cubic-Dresselhaus coupling strength. This may be of relevance for the optical control of spin currents in 2DEGs with non-negligible cubic-Dresselhaus SOC.