Out-of-Plane Spin Polarization from In-Plane Electric and Magnetic Fields

Abstract

We show that the joint effect of spin-orbit and magnetic fields leads to a spin polarization perpendicular to the plane of a homogeneous two-dimensional electron system with Rashba spin-orbit coupling and in-plane parallel dc magnetic and electric fields, for angle-dependent impurity scattering or nonparabolic energy spectrum, while only in-plane polarization persists for simplified models. We derive Bloch equations, describing the main features of recent experiments, including the magnetic field dependence of static and dynamic responses.