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APS » Journals » Phys. Rev. B » Volume 74 » Issue 12
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Phys. Rev. B 74, 121303(R) (2006) [4 pages]

Dissipation through spin Coulomb drag in electronic spin transport and optical excitations

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I. D’Amico1,* and C. A. Ullrich2
1Department of Physics, University of York, York YO10 5DD, United Kingdom
2Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Missouri–Columbia, Columbia, Missouri 65211, USA

Received 3 March 2006; revised 1 August 2006; published 8 September 2006

Spin Coulomb drag (SCD) constitutes an intrinsic source of dissipation for spin currents in metals and semiconductors. We discuss the power loss due to SCD in potential spintronics devices and analyze in detail the associated damping of collective spin-density excitations. It is found that SCD contributes substantially to the linewidth of intersubband spin plasmons in semiconductor quantum wells, which suggests the possibility of a purely optical quantitative measurement of the SCD effect in a parabolic well through inelastic light scattering.

© 2006 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevB.74.121303
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevB.74.121303
PACS:
73.20.Mf, 73.21.−b, 73.40.−c, 73.50.−h

*Electronic address: ida500@york.ac.uk

 
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