Drift-Induced Enhancement of Cubic Dresselhaus Spin-Orbit Interaction in a Two-Dimensional Electron Gas

Phys Rev Lett. 2017 Nov 3;119(18):187703. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.187703. Epub 2017 Oct 31.

Abstract

We investigated the effect of an in-plane electric field on drifting spins in a GaAs quantum well. Kerr rotation images of the drifting spins revealed that the spin precession wavelength increases with increasing drift velocity regardless of the transport direction. A model developed for drifting spins with a heated electron distribution suggests that the in-plane electric field enhances the effective magnetic field component originating from the cubic Dresselhaus spin-orbit interaction.