We show that the combination of a Dresselhaus interaction and a spatially periodic Rashba interaction leads to the formation of a helical liquid in a quantum wire when the electron-electron interaction is weakly screened. The effect is sustained by a helicity-dependent effective band gap which depends on the size of the Dresselhaus and Rashba spin-orbit couplings. We propose a design for a semiconductor device in which the helical liquid can be realized and probed experimentally.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1311.4716,
title = {Synthetic helical liquid in a quantum wire},
author = {George I. Japaridze and Henrik Johannesson and Mariana Malard},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1311.4716},
year = {2015}
}