Dynamic Rashba-Dresselhaus Effect

Martin Schlipf and Feliciano Giustino

Phys. Rev. Lett. 127, 237601 – Published 2 December 2021

Abstract

The Rashba-Dresselhaus effect is the splitting of doubly degenerate band extrema in semiconductors, accompanied by the emergence of counterrotating spin textures and spin-momentum locking. Here we investigate how this effect is modified by lattice vibrations. We show that, in centrosymmetric nonmagnetic crystals, for which a bulk Rashba-Dresselhaus effect is symmetry-forbidden, electron-phonon interactions can induce a phonon-assisted, dynamic Rashba-Dresselhaus spin splitting in the presence of an out-of-equilibrium phonon population. In particular, we show how Rashba, Dresselhaus, or Weyl spin textures can selectively be established by driving coherent infrared-active phonons, and we perform ab initio calculations to quantify this effect for halide perovskites.

Received 23 December 2020
Revised 15 July 2021
Accepted 20 October 2021

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.237601

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Dresselhaus coupling Electron-phonon coupling Optical phonons Rashba coupling Spin-orbit coupling

Condensed Matter, Materials & Applied Physics

Authors & Affiliations

Martin Schlipf ¹ and Feliciano Giustino ^2,3,*

¹VASP Software GmbH, Sensengasse 8, 1090 Vienna, Austria
²Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712, USA
³Department of Physics, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712, USA