Ten Years of Spin Hall Effect

In this short review I survey the theory of the spin Hall effect in doped semiconductors and metals in the light of recent experiments on both kinds of materials. After a brief introduction to different types of spin–orbit coupling in solids, I describe in detail the three conceptually distinct mech...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of superconductivity and novel magnetism 2010, Vol.23 (1), p.3-10
Main Author: Vignale, G.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Characterization and Evaluation of Materials
Condensed Matter Physics
Condensed matter: electronic structure, electrical, magnetic, and optical properties
Electronic transport in condensed matter
Exact sciences and technology
Magnetic Materials
Magnetism
Original Paper
Physics
Physics and Astronomy
Spin polarized transport
Strongly Correlated Systems
Superconductivity
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Summary:In this short review I survey the theory of the spin Hall effect in doped semiconductors and metals in the light of recent experiments on both kinds of materials. After a brief introduction to different types of spin–orbit coupling in solids, I describe in detail the three conceptually distinct mechanisms that are known to contribute to the spin Hall effect, namely “skew-scattering”, “side-jump”, and “intrinsic mechanism”. The skew-scattering mechanism is shown to be dominant in certain clean two-dimensional semiconductors in which one component of the spin is conserved. In such systems the side-jump mechanism is sub-dominant, but universal in form, and can become dominant if the electron mobility is reduced by changing the temperature. Both skew-scattering and side-jump contributions are generally reduced by spin precession, and skew-scattering is completely suppressed in the linear Rashba model in the absence of magnetic field. Different models of spin–orbit coupling can, however, sustain an intrinsic spin Hall effect. A brief summary of the present experimental situation concludes the review.
ISSN:1557-1939
1557-1947
DOI:10.1007/s10948-009-0547-9