Deduction of Pure Spin Current from Spin Linear and Circular Photogalvanic Effect in Semico.pdf

a r X i v : c o n d - m a t / 0 6 1 2 5 4 2 v 1 [ c o n d - m a t .m e s - h a l l ] 2 1 D e c 2 0 0 6 Deduction of Pure Spin Current from Spin Linear and Circular Photogalvanic Effect in Semiconductor Quantum Wells Bin Zhou1,2 and Shun-Qing Shen1 1Department of Physics, and Center for Theoretical and Computational Physics, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong, China 2Department of Physics, Hubei University, Wuhan 430062, China (Dated: February 6, 2008) We study the spin photogalvanic effect in two-dimensional electron system with structure inver- sion asymmetry by means of the solution of semiconductor optical Bloch equations. It is shown that a linearly polarized light may inject a pure spin current in spin-splitting conduction bands due to Rashba spin-orbit coupling, while a circularly polarized light may inject spin-dependent photocur- rent. We establish an explicit relation between the photocurrent by oblique incidence of a circularly polarized light and the pure spin current by normal incidence of a linearly polarized light such that we can deduce the amplitude of spin current from the measured spin photocurrent experimen- tally. This method may provide a source of spin current to study spin transport in semiconductors quantitatively. PACS numbers: 72.25.Fe, 72.40.+w I. INTRODUCTION Spin-coherent transport of conduction electrons in semiconductor heterostructures is currently an emerging subject due to its possible application in a new genera- tion of electronic devices.1 There have been considerable efforts to achieve spin-polarized current or pure spin cur- rent (PSC) in semiconductors. Optical injection of spin current is based largely on the fact that the spin-polarized carriers in conduction band can be injected in semicon- ductors via absorption of the polarized light. In the case of semiconductors, if the photon energy is higher than the characteristic energy gap, such as that of the conduc- tion and valence bands of electrons,