Вышедшие номера
Thermal orientation of electron spins
Tarasenko S.A.1
1Ioffe Physicotechnical Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russia
Поступила в редакцию: 6 февраля 2008 г.
Выставление онлайн: 20 июля 2008 г.

It is shown that the spin orientation of free electrons occurs in low-symmetry semiconductor structures if only the electron gas is driven out of thermal equilibrium with the crystal lattice. The proposed mechanism of such a thermal orientation of electron spins is based on spin dependence of the electron-phonon interaction which tends to restore equilibrium. The microscopic theory of the effect is developed here for asymmetric (110)-grown quantum wells where the electron gas heating leads to the spin orientation along the [110] axis in the quantum well plane. PACS: 72.25.Rb, 73.63.Hs, 75.75.+a