Scientific Calendar Event



Starts 19 Sep 2017 14:00
Ends 19 Sep 2017 15:00
Central European Time
ICTP
Leonardo Building - Euler Lecture Hall
Inefficient screening of electric fields in nanoconductors makes electric manipulation of electronic transport in nanodevices possible. Accordingly, electrostatic (charge) gating is routinely used to affect and control the Coulomb electrostatics and quantum interference in modern nanodevices. Besides their charge, another (quantum mechanical) property of electrons — their spin — is at the heart of modern spintronics, a term implying that a number of magnetic and electrical properties of small systems are simultaneously harvested for device applications. In this presentation the possibility to achieve “spin gating” of mesoscopic devices [1], i.e. the possibility of an external spin control of the electronic properties of nanodevices is discussed. Rather than the Coulomb interaction, which is responsible for electric charge gating, we consider spin gating resulting from the Rashba type of electronic spin-orbit coupling. We show that electric weak links in the form of a nanowire that can be bent gives rise to a possibility for a mechanical control of the spin gating effect, since bending the nanowire affects the trajectory of the electron and therefore the spin-orbit interaction. Mechanically and microwave activated spin currents and superconducting currents in non-superconducting [2] and superconducting [3] devices will be discussed as examples of such a spin-mechanical manipulation.

1. R. I. Shekhter and M. Jonson, Spin gating of mesoscopic devices, Synth. Met. 216, 2-10 (2016).
2. R. I. Shekhter, O. Entin-Wohlman and A. Aharony, Suspended nanowire as a mechanically controlled Rashba spin splitter, Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 176602 (2013).
3. R.I. Shekhter, O. Entin-Wohlman, M. Jonson, and A. Aharony, Rashba splitting of Cooper Pairs, Phys. Rev. Lett, 116, 217001 (2016).