Sign changes and resonance of intrinsic spin Hall effect in two-dimensional hole gas

Tianxing Ma, Qin Liu

Published 2006-06-03, updated 2006-07-21Version 2

The intrinsic spin Hall conductance shows rich sign changes by applying a perpendicular magnetic field in a two-dimensional hole gas. Especially, a notable sign changes can be achieved by adjusting the characteristic length of the Rashba coupling and hole density at moderate magnetic fields. This sign issue may be easily realized in experiments. The oscillations of the intrinsic spin Hall conductance as a function of 1/$B$ is nothing else but Shubnikov-de Haas oscillations, and the additional beatings can be quantitatively related to the value of the spin-orbit coupling parameter. The Zeeman splitting is too small to introduce effective degeneracy between different Landau levels in a two-dimensional hole gas, and the resonant intrinsic spin Hall conductance appears in high hole density and strong magnetic field due to the transition between mostly spin-$-{1/2}$ holes and spin-3/2 holes is confirmed. Two likely ways to establish intrinsic spin Hall effect in experiments and a possible application are suggested.