Strong spin-selective e ects have been recently observed in both photoemission and electrical transport experiments in biomolecular systems, opening fascinating possibilities for interfacing semiconductor and biomolecular systems to create highly e cient spintronics devices. From the theoretical and experimental point of view there are strong suggestions that molecular chirality is playing a cr...

Strong spin orbital interaction (SOI) can induce unique quantum phenomena such as topological insulators, the Rashba effect, or p-wave superconductivity. Combining these three quantum phenomena into a single compound has important scientific implications. Here we report experimental observations of consecutive quantum phase transitions from a Rashba type topological trivial phase to topological...

In these lecture notes we study the disordered two-dimensional electron gas in the presence of Rashba spin-orbit coupling, by using the Keldysh nonequilibrium Green function technique. We describe the effects of the spin-orbit coupling in terms of a SU(2) gauge field and derive a generalized Boltzmann equation for the charge and spin distribution functions. We then apply the formalism to discus...

We discuss the thermodynamic signatures for the topological phase transitions into Majorana and Weyl superfluid phases in ultracold Fermi gases in two and three dimensions (2D and 3D) in the presence of Rashba spin-orbit coupling and a Zeeman field. We analyze the thermodynamic properties exhibiting the distinct nature of the topological phase transitions linked with the Majorana fermions (2D F...

We investigate the effect of strong spin-orbit interaction on the electronic transport through nonmagnetic impurities in one-dimensional systems. When a perpendicular magnetic field is applied, the electron spin polarization becomes momentum-dependent and spin-flip scattering appears, to first order in the applied field, in addition to the usual potential scattering. We analyze a situation in w...

We present an analytical description for ultracold collisions between two spin1 2 fermions with isotropic spin-orbit coupling (SOC) of the Rashba type. We show that regardless of how weak the SOC may be, at sufficiently low energies the collision properties are significantly modified. The ubiquitous low energy Wigner threshold behavior is changed and its modified form for ground-state neutral a...

T. Ideue,1 L. Ye,2 J. G. Checkelsky,2 H. Murakawa,3 Y. Kaneko,4 and Y. Tokura1,4 1Department of Applied Physics, University of Tokyo, Tokyo 113-8656, Japan 2Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA 3Department of Physics, Osaka University, Toyonaka, Osaka 560-0043, Japan 4RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science (CEMS), Wako, Saitama 351-...

Considering metallic films at room temperature, we present the first theoretical study of the spin Nernst and thermal Edelstein effects that takes into account dynamical spin-orbit coupling, i.e., direct spin-orbit coupling with the vibrating lattice (phonons) and impurities. This gives rise to a novel process, namely, a dynamical side-jump mechanism, and to dynamical Elliott-Yafet spin relaxat...

F i g . 1 . ( a) Proximitised Rashba nanowire of finite length with gate-tunable Fermi energy and under a parallel Zeeman field Vz. (b) Bound charges ρb arise in the dielectric surroundings, which interact with free charges in the nanowire. (c,d) Noninteracting and interacting spectra of the nanowire. Extended zero modes (in red) in (d) are the result of the interaction-induced pinning, discuss...

Abstract. We demonstrate how the Rashba spin-orbit coupling in semiconductor heterostructures can produce and control a spin-polarized current without ferromagnetic leads. Key idea is to use spin-double refraction of an electronic beam with a nonzero incidence angle. A region where the spin-orbit coupling is present separates the source and the drain without spin-orbit coupling. We show how the...