Weak Localization, Spin Relaxation, and Spin-Diffusion: Crossover Between Weak and Strong Rashba Coupling Limits

Published

September 17, 2014

Author(s)

Yasufumi Araki, Guru S. Khalsa, Allan H. MacDonald

Abstract

Disorder scattering and spin-orbit coupling are together responsible for the diffusion and relaxation of spin-density in time-reversal invariant systems. We study spin-relaxation and diffusion in a two-dimensional electron gas with Rashba spin-orbit coupling and spin-independent disorder, focusing on its role in transport. Spin-orbit coupling contributes to spin relaxation, transforming the quantum interference contribution to conductivity from a negative weak localization (WL) correction to a positive weak anti-localization (WAL) correction. The importance of spin channel mixing in transport is largest in the regime between the band-resolved and unresolved limits where the Bloch state energy uncertainty $\hbar / \tau$ and the Rashba spin-orbit splitting
$\Δ_SO}$ are comparable. We find that as a consequence the WL-WAL crossover is non-monotonic in this intermediate regime, and use our results to address recent experimental studies of transport at two-dimensional oxide interfaces.

Citation

Physical Review B

Volume

90

Issue

12

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.90.125309

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Keywords

Low temperature transport, two-dimensional electron gas

Citation

Araki, Y. , Khalsa, G. and MacDonald, A. (2014), Weak Localization, Spin Relaxation, and Spin-Diffusion: Crossover Between Weak and Strong Rashba Coupling Limits, Physical Review B, [online], https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.90.125309, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=916181 (Accessed October 14, 2025)