Spin accumulation in the extrinsic spin Hall effect

Abstract

The drift-diffusion formalism for spin-polarized carrier transport in semiconductors is generalized to include spin-orbit coupling. The theory is applied to treat the extrinsic spin Hall effect using realistic boundary conditions. It is shown that carrier and spin-diffusion lengths are modified by the presence of spin-orbit coupling and that spin accumulation due to the extrinsic spin Hall effect is strongly and qualitatively influenced by boundary conditions. Analytical formulas for the spin-dependent carrier recombination rates and inhomogeneous spin densities and currents are presented.