English

Spin angular impulse due to spin-dependent reflection off a barrier

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics 2009-07-23 v2

Abstract

The spin-dependent elastic reflection of quasi two-dimensional electrons from a lateral impenetrable barrier in the presence of band-structure spin-orbit coupling results in a spin angular impulse exerted on the electrons which is proportional to the nontrivial difference between the electrons' momentum and velocity. Even for an unpolarized incoming beam we find that the spin angular impulse is nonzero when averaged over all components of the reflected beam. We present a detailed analysis of the kinematics of this process.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0904.1228,
  title  = {Spin angular impulse due to spin-dependent reflection off a barrier},
  author = {V. Teodorescu and R. Winkler},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0904.1228},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

4 pages, 2 figures, final version

R2 v1 2026-06-21T12:49:14.627Z