Strong Spin-orbit Coupling Regime Research Articles

Dynamic Jahn-Teller effect in the strong spin-orbit coupling regime

Exotic quantum phases, arising from a complex interplay of charge, spin, lattice and orbital degrees of freedom, are of immense interest to a wide research community. A well-known example of such an entangled behavior is the Jahn-Teller effect, where the lifting of orbital degeneracy proceeds through lattice distortions. Here we demonstrate that a highly-symmetrical 5d1 double perovskite Ba2MgReO6, comprising a 3D array of isolated ReO6 octahedra, represents a rare example of a dynamic Jahn-Teller system in the strong spin-orbit coupling regime. Thermodynamic and resonant inelastic x-ray scattering experiments, supported by quantum chemistry calculations, undoubtedly show that the Jahn-Teller instability leads to a ground-state doublet, resolving a long-standing puzzle in this family of compounds. The dynamic state of ReO6 octahedra persists down to the lowest temperatures, where a multipolar order sets in, allowing for investigations of the interplay between a dynamic JT effect and strongly correlated electron behavior.

Intrinsic orbital and spin Hall effect in bismuth semimetal

We investigate the intrinsic orbital Hall conductivity (OHC) and spin Hall conductivity (SHC) in a bismuth semimetal, by employing an $sp$-orbital tight-binding model. We report a notable difference between the anisotropy of OHC and SHC whose orbital and spin polarizations lie within the basal plane. We do not observe a substantial correlation between the orbital and spin Berry curvatures with spin-orbit coupling (SOC) at the Fermi energy, disproving the correlation between OHC and SHC in a strong SOC regime. We argue the huge SHC in a Bi semimetal is attributed to its gigantic SOC which strongly affects the hybridization of the $p$ orbitals, despite its relatively small magnitude of OHC. We hope the distinct anisotropy of OHC and SHC provides a feasible means to differentiate between the two effects in experiments.

Toward the Optimized Spintronic Response of Sn‐Doped IrO2 Thin Films

AbstractAmorphous and polycrystalline Sn‐doped IrO2 thin films, Ir1‐xSnxO2, are grown for the first time. Their electrical response and strength of the spin–orbit coupling are studied in order to better understand and tailor its performance as spin current detector material. These experiments prove that the resistivity of IrO2 can be tuned over several orders of magnitude by controlling the doping content in both the amorphous and the polycrystalline state. In addition, growing amorphous samples increase the resistivity, thus improving the spin current to charge current conversion. As far as the spin–orbit coupling is concerned, the system not only remains in a strong spin–orbit coupling regime but it seems to undergo a slight enhancement in the amorphous state as well as in the Sn‐doped samples.

Spin-relaxation anisotropy in a nanowire quantum dot with strong spin-orbit coupling

We study the impacts of the magnetic field direction on the spin-manipulation and the spin-relaxation in a one-dimensional quantum dot with strong spin-orbit coupling. The energy spectrum and the corresponding eigenfunctions in the quantum dot are obtained exactly. We find that no matter how large the spin-orbit coupling is, the electric-dipole spin transition rate as a function of the magnetic field direction always has a π periodicity. However, the phonon-induced spin relaxation rate as a function of the magnetic field direction has a π periodicity only in the weak spin-orbit coupling regime, and the periodicity is prolonged to 2π in the strong spin-orbit coupling regime.

The impacts of the quantum-dot confining potential on the spin-orbit effect

For a nanowire quantum dot with the confining potential modeled by both the infinite and the finite square wells, we obtain exactly the energy spectrum and the wave functions in the strong spin-orbit coupling regime. We find that regardless of how small the well height is, there are at least two bound states in the finite square well: one has the σx{mathscr{P}} = −1 symmetry and the other has the σx{mathscr{P}} = 1 symmetry. When the well height is slowly tuned from large to small, the position of the maximal probability density of the first excited state moves from the center to x ≠ 0, while the position of the maximal probability density of the ground state is always at the center. A strong enhancement of the spin-orbit effect is demonstrated by tuning the well height. In particular, there exists a critical height {V}_{0}^{c}, at which the spin-orbit effect is enhanced to maximal.

Induced interactions in the BCS-BEC crossover of two-dimensional Fermi gases with Rashba spin-orbit coupling

We investigate the Gorkov--Melik-Barkhudarov (GM) correction to superfluid transition temperature in two-dimensional Fermi gases with Rashba spin-orbit coupling (SOC) across the SOC-driven BCS-BEC crossover. In the calculation of the induced interaction, we find that the spin-component mixing due to SOC can induce both of the conventional screening and additional antiscreening contributions that interplay significantly in the strong SOC regime. While the GM correction generally lowers the estimate of transition temperature, it turns out that at a fixed weak interaction, the correction effect exhibits a crossover behavior where the ratio between the estimates without and with the correction first decreases with SOC and then becomes insensitive to SOC when it goes into the strong SOC regime. We demonstrate the applicability of the GM correction by comparing the zero-temperature condensate fraction with the recent quantum Monte Carlo results.

Three-dimensional quaternionic condensations, Hopf invariants, and skyrmion lattices with synthetic spin-orbit coupling

We study the topological configurations of the two-component condensates of bosons with the three-dimensional $(3\mathrm{D}) \stackrel{P\vec}{\ensuremath{\sigma}}\ifmmode\cdot\else\textperiodcentered\fi{}\stackrel{P\vec}{p}$ Weyl-type spin-orbit coupling subject to a harmonic trapping potential. The topology of the condensate wave functions manifests in the quaternionic representation. In comparison to the $\text{U}(1)$ complex phase, the quaternionic phase manifold is ${S}^{3}$ and the spin orientations form the ${S}^{2}$ Bloch sphere through the first Hopf mapping. The spatial distributions of the quaternionic phases exhibit the 3D skyrmion configurations, and the spin distributions possess nontrivial Hopf invariants. Spin textures evolve from the concentric distributions at the weak spin-orbit coupling regime to the rotation symmetry-breaking patterns at the intermediate spin-orbit coupling regime. In the strong spin-orbit coupling regime, the single-particle spectra exhibit the Landau-level-type quantization. In this regime, the three-dimensional skyrmion lattice structures are formed when interactions are below the energy scale of Landau-level mixings. Sufficiently strong interactions can change condensates into spin-polarized plane-wave states or superpositions of two plane waves exhibiting helical spin spirals.

Stochastic growth dynamics and composite defects in quenched immiscible binary condensates

We study the topological configurations of the two-component condensates of bosons with the $3$D $\vec{\sigma}\cdot \vec{p}$ Weyl-type spin-orbit coupling subject to a harmonic trapping potential. The topology of the condensate wavefunctions manifests in the quaternionic representation. In comparison to the $U(1)$ complex phase, the quaternionic phase manifold is $S^3$ and the spin orientations form the $S^2$ Bloch sphere through the 1st Hopf mapping. The spatial distributions of the quaternionic phases exhibit the 3D skyrmion configurations, and the spin distributions possess non-trivial Hopf invariants. Spin textures evolve from the concentric distributions at the weak spin-orbit coupling regime to the rotation symmetry breaking patterns at the intermediate spin-orbit coupling regime. In the strong spin-orbit coupling regime, the single-particle spectra exhibit the Landau-level type quantization. In this regime, the three-dimensional skyrmion lattice structures are formed when interactions are below the energy scale of Landau level mixings. Sufficiently strong interactions can change condensates into spin-polarized plane-wave states, or, superpositions of two plane-waves exhibiting helical spin spirals.

Anisotropic exchange coupling in a nanowire double quantum dot with strong spin-orbit coupling

A spin-orbit qubit is a hybrid qubit that contains both orbital and spin degrees of freedom of an electron in a quantum dot. Here we study the exchange coupling between two spin-orbit qubits in a nanowire double quantum dot (DQD) with strong spin-orbit coupling (SOC). We find that while the total tunneling in the DQD is irrelevant to the SOC, both the spin-conserved and spin-flipped tunnelings are SOC dependent and can compete with each other in the strong SOC regime. Moreover, the Coulomb repulsion between electrons can combine with the SOC-dependent tunnelings to yield an anisotropic exchange coupling between the two spin-orbit qubits. Also, we give an explicit physical mechanism for this anisotropic exchange coupling.

Microscopic mechanism for asymmetric charge distribution in Rashba-type surface states and the origin of the energy splitting scale

Microscopic mechanism for the Rashba-type band splitting is examined in detail. We show how asymmetric charge distribution is formed when local orbital angular momentum (OAM) and crystal momentum get interlocked due to surface effects. An electrostatic energy term in the Hamiltonian appears when such OAM and crystal momentum dependent asymmetric charge distribution is placed in an electric field produced from an inversion symmetry breaking (ISB). Analysis by using an effective Hamiltonian shows that, as the atomic spin-orbit coupling (SOC) strength increases from weak to strong, originally OAM-quenched states evolve into well-defined chiral OAM states and then to total angular momentum J-states. In addition, the energy scale of the band splitting changes from atomic SOC energy to electrostatic energy. To confirm the validity of the model, we study OAM and spin structures of Au(111) system by using an effective Hamiltonian for the d-orbitals case. As for strong SOC regime, we choose Bi2Te2Se as a prototype system. We performed circular dichroism angle resolved photoemission spectroscopy experiments as well as first-principles calculations. We find that the effective model can explain various aspects of spin and OAM structures of the system.

Reading Charge Transport from the Spin Dynamics on the Surface of a Topological Insulator

Resolving the conductance of the topological surface states (TSSs) from the bulk contribution has been a great challenge for studying the transport properties of topological insulators. By developing a nonperturbative diffusion equation that describes fully the spin-charge dynamics in the strong spin-orbit coupling regime, we present a proposal to read the charge transport information of TSSs from its spin dynamics which can be isolated from the bulk contribution by the time-resolved second harmonic generation pump-probe measurement. We demonstrate the qualitatively different Dyaknov-Perel spin relaxation behavior between the TSSs and the two-dimensional spin-orbit coupling electron gas. The decay time of both in-plane and out-of-plane spin polarization is naturally proved to be identical to the charge transport time. The out-of-plane spin dynamics is shown to be in the experimentally reachable regime of the femtosecond pump-probe spectroscopy and thereby we suggest experiments to detect the charge transport properties of the TSSs from their unique spin dynamics.

Controlling a Nanowire Spin-Orbit Qubit via Electric-Dipole Spin Resonance

A semiconductor nanowire quantum dot with strong spin-orbit coupling (SOC) can be used to achieve a spin-orbit qubit. In contrast to a spin qubit, the spin-orbit qubit can respond to an external ac electric field, an effect called electric-dipole spin resonance. Here we develop a theory that can apply in the strong SOC regime. We find that there is an optimal SOC strength η(opt)=√2/2, where the Rabi frequency induced by the ac electric field becomes maximal. Also, we show that both the level spacing and the Rabi frequency of the spin-orbit qubit have periodic responses to the direction of the external static magnetic field. These responses can be used to determine the SOC in the nanowire.

Unified theory of spin dynamics in a two-dimensional electron gas with arbitrary spin-orbit coupling strength at finite temperature

We study the spin dynamics in the presence of impurity and electron-electron (e-e) scattering in a III-V semiconductor quantum well with arbitrary spin-orbit coupling (SOC) strength and symmetry at finite temperature. We derive the coupled spin-charge dynamic equations in the presence of inelastic scattering and provide a new formalism that describes the spin relaxation and dynamics in both the weak and the strong SOC regimes in a unified way. In the weak SOC regime, as expected, our theory reproduces all previous zero-temperature results, most of which have focused on impurity-scattering induced spin-charge dynamics. In the regime where the strength of the Rashba and linear Dresselhaus SOC match, known as the SU(2) symmetry point, experiments have observed the spin-helix mode with a large spin-lifetime whose unexplained nonmonotonic temperature dependence peaks at around 75 K. As a key test of our theory, we are able to naturally explain quantitatively this nonmonotonic dependence and show that it arises as a competition between the Dyakonov-Perel mechanism, suppressed at the SU(2) point, and the Elliott-Yafet mechanism. In the strong SOC regime, we show that our theory directly reproduces the only previous known analytical result at the SU(2) symmetry point in the ballistic regime. It also explains, as we have shown previously, the rise of damped oscillating dynamics when the electron scattering time is larger than half of the spin precession time due to the SOC. Hence we provide a unified theory of the spin dynamics in two-dimensional electron gases in the full phase diagram experimentally accessible.

Dimensionality Driven Spin-Flop Transition in Layered Iridates

Using resonant x-ray diffraction, we observe an easy c-axis collinear antiferromagnetic structure for the bilayer Sr3Ir2O7, a significant contrast to the single layer Sr2IrO4 with in-plane canted moments. Based on a microscopic model Hamiltonian, we show that the observed spin-flop transition as a function of number of IrO2 layers is due to strong competition among intra- and interlayer bond-directional pseudodipolar interactions of the spin-orbit entangled J(eff)=1/2 moments. With this we unravel the origin of anisotropic exchange interactions in a Mott insulator in the strong spin-orbit coupling regime, which holds the key to the various types of unconventional magnetism proposed in 5d transition metal oxides.

Phonon-assisted transport through suspended carbon nanotube quantum dots

Motivated by several recent experiments, we investigate phonon-assisted electronic transport through suspended carbon nanotube quantum dots including electron-electron, electron-phonon, and spin-orbit interactions. By effectively decoupling the electron and phonon thermodynamics, we present an explanation for the puzzling thermoinduced vibrational absorption sidebands, as well further predict that these absorption sidebands are obviously diminished in the partially filled Coulomb diamonds due to the destructive superposition of electron and hole states. The spin-orbit coupling is shown to split all phonon-assisted sidebands while the Kramers degeneracy remains. Interestingly, in the strong spin-orbit coupling regime, some split absorption sidebands are suppressed by the Coulomb blockade effect, while all split emission sidebands always survive.

Spin dynamics in the strong spin-orbit coupling regime

We study the spin dynamics in a high-mobility two-dimensional electron gas with generic spin-orbit interactions (SOI's). We derive a set of spin-dynamics equations that capture purely exponentially the damped oscillatory spin evolution modes observed in different regimes of SOI strength. Hence we provide a full treatment of the D'yakonov-Perel mechanism by using the microscopic linear-response theory from the weak to the strong SOI limit. We show that the damped oscillatory modes appear when the electron scattering time is larger than half of the spin precession time due to the SOI, in agreement with recent observations. We propose a way to measure the scattering time and the relative strength of Rashba and linear Dresselhaus SOI's based on these modes and optical grating experiments. We discuss the physical interpretation of each of these modes in the context of Rabi oscillation.

Scattering states of coupled valence-band holes in a point-defect potential derived from variable-phase theory

In this article we present a method to compute the scattering states of holes in spherical bands in the strong spin-orbit coupling regime. More precisely, we calculate scattering phase shifts and amplitudes of holes induced by defects in a semiconductor crystal. We follow a previous work done on this topic by Ralph [H. I. Ralph, Philips Res. Rept. 32 160 (1977)] to account for the p-wave nature and the coupling of valence band states. We extend Ralph's analysis to incorporate finite-range potentials in the scattering problem. We find that the variable phase method provides a very convenient framework for our purposes and show in detail how scattering amplitudes and phase shifts are obtained. The Green's matrix of the Schroedinger equation, the Lippmann-Schwinger equation and the Born approximation are also discussed. Examples are provided to illustrate our calculations with Yukawa type potentials.

Magnetization orientation dependence of the quasiparticle spectrum and hysteresis in ferromagnetic metal nanoparticles

We use a microscopic Slater-Koster tight-binding model with short-range exchange and atomic spin-orbit interactions that realistically captures generic features of ferromagnetic metal nanoparticles to address the mesoscopic physics of magnetocrystalline anisotropy and hysteresis in nanoparticle quasiparticle excitation spectra. Our analysis is based on qualitative arguments supported by self-consistent Hartree-Fock calculations for nanoparticles containing up to 260 atoms. Calculations of the total energy as a function of magnetization direction demonstrate that the magnetic anisotropy per atom fluctuates by several percents when the number of electrons in the particle changes by one, even for the largest particles we consider. Contributions of individual orbitals to the magnetic anisotropy are characterized by a broad distribution with a mean more than two orders of magnitude smaller than its variance and with no detectable correlations between anisotropy contribution and quasiparticle energy. We find that the discrete quasiparticle excitation spectrum of a nanoparticle displays a complex non-monotonic dependence on an external magnetic field, with abrupt jumps when the magnetization direction is reversed by the field, explaining recent spectroscopic studies of magnetic nanoparticles. Our results suggests the existence of a broad cross-over from a weak spin-orbit coupling to a strong spin-orbit coupling regime, occurring over the range from approximately 200- to 1000-atom nanoparticles.