Extrinsic nonlinear spin currents in spin-orbit coupled systems: A Boltzmann transport study

Abstract

We develop a semiclassical Boltzmann framework for second-order extrinsic spin transport in the presence of skew scattering. The conventional relaxation-time approximation reduces the full collision integral to a single phenomenological timescale and thereby neglects the angular structure of impurity scattering. While the transport relaxation time primarily characterizes the leading angular harmonic of the nonequilibrium distribution, nonlinear response is sensitive to its higher angular harmonics, which are governed by distinct components of the collision operator. We therefore retain the angular and band dependence of the scattering kernel and decompose both the collision integral and the distribution function into Fourier harmonics. The resulting coupled algebraic equations allow the symmetric and skew-scattering corrections to the distribution function to be obtained recursively order by order in the electric field. We apply this formalism to the gapped surface states of a topological insulator with spin-dependent impurity scattering and evaluate the corresponding second-order extrinsic spin-current response. Our results show that higher angular harmonics of the nonequilibrium distribution and scattering between distinct constant-energy contours play an essential role in extrinsic nonlinear spin transport beyond the single-relaxation-time approximation.