Using a three-dimensional spin polarimeter we have gathered evidence for the interference of spin states in photoemission from the surface alloy Sb/Ag(111). This system features a small Rashba-type spin-splitting of a size comparable to the linewidth of the quasiparticles, thus causing an intrinsic overlap between states with orthogonal spinors. Besides a small spin polarization caused by the spin-splitting, we observe a large spin polarization component in the plane normal to the quantization axis provided by the Rashba effect. Strongly suggestive of coherent spin rotation, this effect is largely independent of the photon energy and photon polarization.
@article{arxiv.1001.4927,
title = {Interference of spin states in photoemission from Sb/Ag(111)},
author = {Fabian Meier and Vladimir Petrov and Hossein Mirhosseini and Luc Patthey and Juergen Henk and Juerg Osterwalder and J. Hugo Dil},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1001.4927},
year = {2010}
}