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Chirality relaxation in low-temperature strongly Rashba-coupled systems

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

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Abstract

jats:titleAbstract</jats:title> jats:pWe study the relaxation dynamics of non-equilibrium chirality distributions of charge carriers in Rashba systems. We find that at low temperature inter-Rashba band transitions become suppressed due to the combined effect of the Rashba momentum split and the chiral spin texture of a Rashba system. Specifically, we show that momentum exchange between carriers and the phonon bath is effectively absent at temperatures where the momentum of thermal phonons is less than twice the Rashba momentum. This allows us to identify inter-carrier scattering as the dominant process by which non-equilibrium chirality distributions relax. We show that the magnitude of inter-carrier scattering is strongly influenced by the opposing spin structure of the Rashba bands. Finally, we provide an explicit result for the inter-band relaxation timescale associated with inter-carrier Coulomb scattering. We develop a general framework and assess its implications for GeTe, a bulk Rashba semiconductor with a strong Rashba momentum split.</jats:p>

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Keywords

Journal Title

Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

0953-8984
1361-648X

Volume Title

32

Publisher

IOP Publishing

Rights

All rights reserved
Sponsorship
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/K004077/1)
EPSRC (EP/K503757/1)