Conductance of Rashba spin-split systems with ferromagnetic contacts

Abstract

We study theoretically the conductance of heterostructures with ferromagnetic conductors (F) and a two dimensional electron gas with Rashba spin-orbit interaction (R) using the Landauer-B\"{u}ttiker formalism. Assuming a one-dimensional model, we first find the $S$-matrix for the FR interface. This result is then applied to different devices such as a FRF structure, first suggested by Datta and Das[Appl. Phys. Lett. 56, 665 (1990)]. We find analytic results for the conductance for the case of collinear magnetization.