Abstract
The inverse spin Hall effect induced by circularly polarized light has been observed in a GaAs/AlGaAs two-dimensional electron gas. The spin transverse force has been determined by fitting the photo-induced inverse spin Hall effect (PISHE) current to a theoretical model. The PISHE current is also measured at different light power and different light spot profiles, and all the measurement results are in good agreement with the theoretical calculations. We also measure the PISHE current at different temperatures (i.e., from 77 to 300 K). The temperature dependence of the PISHE current indicates that the extrinsic mechanism plays a dominant role, which is further confirmed by the weak dependence of the PISHE current on the crystal orientation of the sample.
Highlights
Spintronics has attracted much attention due to its potential applications in information technology as well as revealing fundamental questions on the physics of electron spin in condensed matter [1–4]
As the polarization state of the light is changed from left-hand circular polarization (σ +) to the right-hand circular polarization (σ −), the spin polarization of electrons is changed from spin up to spin down, leading to the reversion of the spin transverse force and the photo-induced inverse spin Hall effect (PISHE) current
The spin transverse force has been determined by fitting the PISHE current to a theoretical model
Summary
Spintronics has attracted much attention due to its potential applications in information technology as well as revealing fundamental questions on the physics of electron spin in condensed matter [1–4]. The SHE and ISHE have been widely studied in metallic films with heavy elements, such as Pt, Ta, Py, and IrMn, and the emerging topological insulators, such as Bi2Se3 and SnTe, due to their strong SOC [9–14]. These two effects are observed in semiconductors, such as GaAs, ZnO, Si, Ge, GaN/AlGaN, and GaAs/AlGaAs two-dimensional electron gas [15–20]. The intrinsic mechanism is dependent only on the band structure of the perfectly order material [7, 23, 24], originating from Rashba [25–27] or Dresselhaus SOC [26], while the extrinsic mechanism refers to asymmetric Mott-skew or side-jump scattering from impurities in a spin-orbit coupled system [16, 24, 28, 29].
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