UNIVERSIDADE DE SÃO PAULO Instituto de Física de São Carlos Spin orbit interaction in semiconductors J. Carlos Egues Instituto de Física de São Carlos Universidade de São Paulo
[email protected] International School of Physics Enrico Fermi: Quantum Spintronics and Related Phenomena Varenna, June 19 2012 Lecture 1 • Motivation • Spin & orbit: an early experiment • Spin-orbit interaction: a simple picture • Sommerfeld model + spin orbit: spin splitting • New experiment: interband s-o coupling (2D) • „Cross-dressed‟ atoms as cool spins (energy scales, Zitterbewegung) • Summary Carlos Egues, Varenna 2012 Some (early) motivation 2012 Conventional electronics: charge plays a fundamental role in devices [integrated circuits: resistors, transistors (billions), etc.] Varenna , Vg Egues Source Drain Carlos Carlos Field Effect Transistor (FET) “spin: factor of 2” (http://www.pbs.org/transistor/science/) „Rashba effect‟ Datta and Das (APL 56, 1990) Emmanuel Rashba Supriyo.Datta Gate FM1 2DEG FM2 (courtesy of Th. Schäpers) Motivation 2012 Spin FET (Semiconductor spintronics, etc.) Varenna , • Most popular proposed spintronic device (Datta and Das ’90); Egues • Coherent electric control of magnetic degrees of freedom; Carlos Carlos • Low energy to rotate/flip spins; faster (?); (Hall & Flatté, APL/2006) • More control & various modes of operation. Logic gates with “dynamic” functions: reprogrammable on the fly; Multifunctional: logic, storage, processing, communication, etc, in a single chip? • Design flexibility (hybrid devices, geometry, etc. etc.) • Quantum effects: coherence? Quantum computation? [Awschalom, Flatte, and Samarth, Sci. Am., 2002 (also Sci. Am. Oct/2004); Awschalom & Flatté Nat. Phys. (2007)] • General: fertile ground for novel spin-dependent phenomena. Interplay of many-body effects (tunability) & quantum confinement; spin-flip mechanisms, spin injection and spin polarized transport, non-local quantum correlations (EPR), etc.