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S A Tarasenko

Publications and source records attributed to S A Tarasenko.

2 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2004

In-plane electric current is induced by tunneling of spin-polarized carriers.

It has been shown that tunneling of spin-polarized electrons through a semiconductor barrier is accompanied by generation of an electric current in the plane of the interfaces. The direction of this interface current is determined by the spin orientation of the electrons and symmetry properties of the barrier; in particular, the current reverses its direction if the spin orientation changes the sign. Microscopic origin of such a "tunneling spin-galvanic" effect is the spin-orbit coupling-induced dependence of the barrier transparency on the spin orientation and the wave vector of electrons.

Journal Article↗
PubMed2002

Spin-galvanic effect.

There is much recent interest in exploiting the spin of conduction electrons in semiconductor heterostructures together with their charge to realize new device concepts. Electrical currents are usually generated by electric or magnetic fields, or by gradients of, for example, carrier concentration or temperature. The electron spin in a spin-polarized electron gas can, in principle, also drive an electrical current, even at room temperature, if some general symmetry requirements are met. Here we demonstrate such a 'spin-galvanic' effect in semiconductor heterostructures, induced by a non-equilibrium, but uniform population of electron spins. The microscopic origin for this effect is that the two electronic sub-bands for spin-up and spin-down electrons are shifted in momentum space and, although the electron distribution in each sub-band is symmetric, there is an inherent asymmetry in the spin-flip scattering events between the two sub-bands. The resulting current flow has been detected by applying a magnetic field to rotate an optically oriented non-equilibrium spin polarization in the direction of the sample plane. In contrast to previous experiments, where spin-polarized currents were driven by electric fields in semiconductor, we have here the complementary situation where electron spins drive a current without the need of an external electric field.

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