Spin-precession in an adiabatically rotating electric field

Abstract

Due to spin-orbit coupling, the adiabatic perturbation of an electron's orbital motion induced by a revolving external electric field lead to the electron spin-precession. The obtained results describe both transverse and longitudinal dynamics of an effective spin, for conical and figure-8 trajectories of a driving electric field, and elucidate the link between the quantum-mechanical, geometrical, and classical pictures of spin rotation. Within the limit of adiabatic approximation the derived formulas are valid regardless of whether eigenvectors of the total Hamiltonian of the problem are explicitly available or not, and are convenient for approximate calculations. The main expression for the time evolution of the Bloch vector has pure geometric character and is independent of the physical context.