https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2015-60425-6
Regular Article
Zitterbewegung of a heavy hole in presence of spin-orbit interactions
1 Department of Physics, Indian
Institute of Technology-Kanpur, 208 016
Kanpur,
India
2 Department of Physics,
Vivekananda Mahavidyalaya-Burdwan,
713 103
Sripally, West Bengal,
India
a e-mail: tutulb@iitk.ac.in
Received:
28
May
2015
Received in final form:
22
July
2015
Published online:
7
September
2015
We study the zitterbewegung of a heavy hole in presence of both cubic Rashba and cubic Dresselhaus spin-orbit interactions. On contrary to the electronic case, zitterbewegung does not vanish for equal strength of Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit interaction. This non-vanishing of zitterbewegung is associated with the Berry phase. Due to the presence of the spin-orbit coupling the spin associated with the heavy hole precesses about an effective magnetic field. This spin precession produces a transverse spin-orbit force which also generates an electric voltage associated with zitterbewegung. We have estimated the magnitude of this voltage for a possible experimental detection of zitterbewegung.
Key words: Solid State and Materials
© EDP Sciences, Società Italiana di Fisica, Springer-Verlag, 2015