Screening effect in Spin-Hall Devices

Abstract

The stationary state of the spin-Hall bar is studied in the framework of a variational approach that includes non-equilibrium screening effects. The minimization of the power dissipated in the system is performed with taking into account the spin-flip relaxation and the global constrains due to the electric generator and global charge conservation. The calculation is performed in both approximations of negligible spin-flip scattering and strong spin-flip scattering. In both cases, the expressions of the spin-accumulation and the longitudinal and transverse pure spin-currents are derived analytically. Due to the small value of the Debye-Fermi screening length, the spin-accumulation is shown to be linear in $y$ (across the device), linear in the electric field imposed by the generator, and inversely proportional to the temperature for non-degenerate conductors.