title: Unconventional dc Transport in Rashba Electron Gases.
abstract: We discuss the transport properties of a disordered two-dimensional electron gas with strong Rashba spin-orbit coupling. We show that in the high-density regime where the Fermi energy overcomes the energy associated with spin-orbit coupling, dc transport is accurately described by a standard Drude's law, due to a nontrivial compensation between the suppression of backscattering and the relativistic correction to the quasiparticle velocity. On the contrary, when the system enters the opposite dominant spin-orbit regime, Drude's paradigm breaks down and the dc conductivity becomes strongly sensitive to the spin-orbit coupling strength, providing a suitable tool to test the entanglement between spin and charge degrees of freedom in these systems.
authors.affiliation: ISC-CNR and Department of Physics, Sapienza University of Rome, Piazzale Aldo Moro 2, 00185 Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: Valentina
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Brosco
authors.affiliation: ISC-CNR and Department of Physics, Sapienza University of Rome, Piazzale Aldo Moro 2, 00185 Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: Lara
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Benfatto
authors.affiliation: ISC-CNR and Department of Physics, Sapienza University of Rome, Piazzale Aldo Moro 2, 00185 Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: Emmanuele
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Cappelluti
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Physics of Complex Matter, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Station 3, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Claudio
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Grimaldi