Spin-dependent Hall effect in semiconductor quantum wells

Abstract

We present a theoretical study of the spin-dependent scattering of electrons from screened attractive and repulsive impurities in III-V semiconductor quantum wells. The effective one-band Hamiltonian and the Rashba spin–orbit interaction are used. We demonstrated that the asymmetry of the spin-dependent skew-scattering and side-jump effect can lead to a quite large spin-dependent (anomalous) Hall effect at zero magnetic field in all-semiconductor quantum well structures. Our theory predicts a measurable spin-dependent Hall angle that reaches about 2.5×10−3 rad for a CdTe/InSb/CdTe quantum well with impurities doped in the center of the well.