Beating of Friedel oscillations induced by spin-orbit interaction

Abstract

By exploiting our recently derived exact formula for the Lindhard polarization function in the presence of
Bychkov-Rashba BR and Dresselhaus D spin-orbit interaction SOI, we show that the interplay of different
SOI mechanisms induces highly anisotropic modifications of the static dielectric function. We find that under
certain circumstances the polarization function exhibits doubly singular behavior. It leads to an intriguing
phenomenon, beating of Friedel oscillations, which can be controlled by external fields. This effect is a general
feature of systems with BR+D SOI and should be observed in structures with a sufficiently strong SOI.