Spatially separating electrons of different spins and efficiently generating spin currents are crucial steps towards building practical spintronics devices. Transverse magnetic focusing is a viable technique to accomplish both those tasks. In a material with Rashba spin-orbit interaction, electrons of different spins will have different momenta. An external magnetic field can then be applied to focus these electrons into cyclotron trajectories with different radii, allowing them to be collected separately by spin. Experiments have demonstrated the viability of this technique by measuring signature spectra that indicate the separation of spin-up and spin-down electrons. However, the effect that the geometry of the contacts used has on the signature measurements is not well explored. Here we simulate contacts of various shapes and widths, and that there are effects on measurements. We also demonstrate that transverse magnetic focusing could be used to directly measure the spin gap opened by the interplay of the Zeeman and Rashba spin-orbit interactions.About the presenter
Yik-Kheng Lee is a PhD student at RMIT University, working with Prof Jared Cole, following his Honours project with FLEET which was on modelling the transport properties of a two-dimensional electron gas. His research interests are in the field of topological materials, under FLEET’s research theme 1.