Proposal for direct measurement of a pure spin current by a polarized light beam.
The photon helicity may be mapped to a spin-1/2, whereby we put forward an intrinsic interaction between a polarized light beam as a "photon spin current" and a pure spin current in a semiconductor, which arises from the spin-orbit coupling in valence bands as a pure relativity effect without involving the Rashba or the Dresselhaus effect due to inversion asymmetries. The interaction leads to linear and circular optical birefringence, which are similar to the Voigt effect and the Faraday rotation in magneto-optics but nevertheless involve no net magnetization. The birefringence effects provide a direct, nondemolition measurement of pure spin currents.
Wang
Jing
J
Department of Physics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, N.T., Hong Kong, China.
Zhu
Bang-Fen
BF
Liu
Ren-Bao
RB