Eur. Phys. J. B (2012) 85: 84
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2012-20736-8

Regular Article

Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit interaction in semiconductor quantum wells

¹ Physics Department, Zhejiang Normal University, Zhejiang 321004, P.R. China
² Key Laboratory of Semiconductor Materials Science, Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.O. Box 912, Beijing 100083, P.R. China

^a e-mail: haoyafei@zjnu.cn

Received: 5 July 2011
Received in final form: 30 December 2011
Published online: 29 February 2012

Abstract

We theoretically investigate the Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit interaction in AlAs/GaAs/Al_0.3Ga_0.7As/AlAs step-quantum wells. The ratio of Rashba and Dresselhaus spin splitting can be effectively manipulated by the well width and step width in the absence of electric field and magnetic field. When the well width of the step-quantum well is wider than 10 nm, the total spin splitting, which contains the contribution of interface as well as linear and cubic Dresselhaus terms, is always the greatest when the width of GaAs layer equals to about 2 nm. When the well width is wider than 2 nm, two different step widths can meet the SU(2) symmetry conditions, the smaller one of them results in maximum spin relaxation time. We also predict the application of the step-quantum well in spintronic devices.