Giant collective spin-orbit field in a quantum well: fine structure of spin plasmons

Phys Rev Lett. 2012 Oct 19;109(16):166401. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.109.166401. Epub 2012 Oct 15.

Abstract

We employ inelastic light scattering with magnetic fields to study intersubband spin plasmons in a quantum well. We demonstrate the existence of a giant collective spin-orbit (SO) field that splits the spin-plasmon spectrum into a triplet. The effect is remarkable as each individual electron would be expected to precess in its own momentum-dependent SO field, leading to D'yakonov-Perel' dephasing. Instead, many-body effects lead to a striking organization of the SO fields at the collective level. The macroscopic spin moment is quantized by a uniform collective SO field, five times higher than the individual SO field. We provide a momentum-space cartography of this field.