Spin Hall effects due to phonon skew scattering

Abstract

A diversity of spin Hall effects in metallic systems is known to rely on Mott skew scattering. In this work its high-temperature counterpart, phonon skew scattering, which is expected to be of foremost experimental relevance, is investigated. In particular, the phonon skew scattering spin Hall conductivity is found to be practically $T$-independent for temperatures above the Debye temperature $T_D$. As a consequence, in Rashba-like systems a high-$T$ linear behavior of the spin Hall angle demonstrates the dominance of extrinsic spin-orbit scattering only if the intrinsic spin splitting is smaller than the temperature.