Spin Hall Effect in a Diffusive Rashba Two-dimensional Electron Gas

Abstract

A nonequilibrium Green's functions approach to spin-Hall effect is developed in a diffusive two-dimensional electron system with Rashba spin-orbit interaction. In the presence of long-range impurities, the coupled quantum kinetic equations are solved analytically in the self-consistent Born approximation. It is shown that the intrinsic spin-Hall effect stems from the dc-field-induced perturbation of the density of states. In addition, there is an additional disorder-mediated process, which involves the transition of nonequilibrium electrons between two spin-orbit-coupled bands. It results in an additional collision-independent spin-Hall conductivity and leads to the vanishing of the total spin-Hall current even at nonzero temperature.