Regensburg 2016 – scientific programme

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DS: Fachverband Dünne Schichten

DS 51: Transport: Spintronics and Magnetotransport
(Joint session of DS, HL, MA and TT, organized by TT)

DS 51.1: Invited Talk

Thursday, March 10, 2016, 16:15–16:45, H23

Non-Abelian gauge theory description of (dynamical) spin-orbit coupling effects in Fermi gases. — •Cosimo Gorini — Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Regensburg, Germany

Spin-orbit coupling heavily influences the dynamics of charge carriers in a solid, where its strength can be enhanced by orders of magnitude as compared to the vacuum. Remarkable consequences are phenomena such as the spin Hall and inverse spin galvanic (or Edelstein) effects, where spin currents and polarizations are generated by purely electrical means. The intricacies of such rich spin-charge coupled dynamics can be described within a non-Abelian gauge theory approach [1], based on Keldysh non-equilibrium formalism [2]. Thanks to a symmetric treatment of spin and charge degrees of freedom, and the removal of ambiguities related to spin non-conservation in the presence of (static or dynamical) spin-orbit coupling, a physically transparent picture is achieved [3]. Furthermore, the non-Abelian language, by virtue of its universal character, treats on the same footing standard spin-orbit interaction in solid state systems and exotic forms of (pseudo) spin-orbit coupling which arise, or can be engineered, in different contexts.

[1] H. Mathur and A. D. Stone, PRL 68, 2964 (1991)

I. V. Tokatly, PRL 101, 106601 (2008).

[2] C. Gorini et al., PRB 82, 195316 (2010).

[3] C. Gorini et al., PRL 109, 246604 (2012)