Experimental separation of Rashba and Dresselhaus spin splittings in semiconductor quantum wells.
The relative strengths of Rashba and Dresselhaus terms describing the spin-orbit coupling in semiconductor quantum well (QW) structures are extracted from photocurrent measurements on n-type InAs QWs containing a two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG). This novel technique makes use of the angular distribution of the spin-galvanic effect at certain directions of spin orientation in the plane of a QW. The ratio of the relevant Rashba and Dresselhaus coefficients can be deduced directly from experiment and does not relay on theoretically obtained quantities. Thus our experiments open a new way to determine the different contributions to spin-orbit coupling.
Ganichev
S D
SD
Fakultät Physik, University of Regensburg, 93040 Regensburg, Germany.
Bel'kov
V V
VV
Golub
L E
LE
Ivchenko
E L
EL
Schneider
Petra
P
Giglberger
S
S
Eroms
J
J
De Boeck
J
J
Borghs
G
G
Wegscheider
W
W
Weiss
D
D
Prettl
W
W