Intrinsic anisotropic magnetoresistance in spin-polarized two-dimensional electron gas with Rashba spin-orbit interaction

Abstract

We analyze the effects of disorder on the intrinsic anisotropic magnetoresistance (AMR) of a spin-polarized two-dimensional electron gas with a Rashba-type spin-orbit interaction in the linear response theory. We show that the AMR vanishes unless the lifetime is spin dependent, analogous with the anomalous and spin Hall effects, which indicates a strong similarity between the anomalous and spin Hall effects and AMR. Furthermore, we perform numerical simulations of the ballistic and diffusive AMR.