Current-induced spin polarization in a spin-polarized two-dimensional electron gas with spin–orbit coupling

Abstract

The current-induced spin polarization (CISP) is investigated in a combined Rashba–Dresselhaus spin–orbit-coupled two-dimensional electron gas, subjected to a homogeneous out-of-plane magnetization. It is found that, in addition to the usual collision-related in-plane parts of CISP, there are two impurity-density-free contributions, arising from intrinsic and disorder-mediated mechanisms. The intrinsic parts of spin polarization are related to the Berry curvature, analogous with the anomalous and spin Hall effects. For short-range collision, the disorder-mediated spin polarizations completely cancel the intrinsic ones and the total in-plane components of CISP equal those for systems without magnetization. However, for remote disorders, this cancellation does not occur and the total in-plane components of CISP strongly depend on the spin–orbit interaction coefficients and magnetization for both pure Rashba and combined Rashba–Dresselhaus models.