The presence of spin-orbit coupling drives the anomalous magnetotransport at oxide interfaces and forms the basis for numerous intriguing properties of these 2D electron systems, such as topologically protected phases or anti-localization. For many of those systems, the identification of the underlying coupling mechanism is obfuscated by multi-band effects. We therefore analyze the transport of LaAlO3/SrTiO3 interfaces under high pressures, a technique to single out the multi-band contributions. We argue that the observed magnetoresistance is due to quantum interference and not related to Coulomb interaction. Therefore, this system is an excellent candidate to generate a metal-insulator transition of the long-sought symplectic 2D universality class. It is shown that the spin-orbit coupling can be linked unambiguously to the band structure with a cubic (Dresselhaus-like) rather than a linear (Rashba-like) spin-orbit band splitting.
@article{arxiv.1609.07425,
title = {The mechanism of spin-orbit coupling in a 2D oxide interface},
author = {Patrick Seiler and Jone Zabaleta and Robin Wanke and Jochen Mannhart and Thilo Kopp and Daniel Braak},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1609.07425},
year = {2018}
}