Manipulation of Persistent Spin Helix States by Weak External Magnetic Fields

Abstract

We study theoretically the effect of weak external magnetic fields on persistent spin helix states in semiconductor two-dimensional electron gases with both Rashba and linear-in-momentum Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling. We show that in the presence of weak external magnetic fields, some basic properties of a persistent spin helix state, including the dispersion relation between the decay time and the magnitude of the wavevector, the maximum decay time and the value of the characteristic magnitude of the wavevector at which the maximum decay time occurs, will all depend sensitively on the directions of applied external magnetic fields.