Orbital magnetization in semiconductors

• Published in: Chinese physics B Vol. 18; no. 12; pp. 5431 - 5436
• Main Author: 方诚 王志刚 李树深 张平
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: IOP Publishing 01.12.2009
• Subjects: Bohr magneton; Conductance; Halls; Heterostructures; Joining; Magnetization; N-type semiconductors; Orbitals; P-type semiconductors; Semiconductors; Splitting; Symmetry; 二维电子; 半导体异质结构; 哈密顿描述; 塞曼分裂; 玻尔磁子; 电子掺杂; 自旋轨道耦合
• ISSN: 1674-1056; 2058-3834
• DOI: 10.1088/1674-1056/18/12/050

This paper theoretically investigates the orbital magnetization of electron-doped （n-type） semiconductor het-erostructures and of hole-doped （p-type） bulk semiconductors, which are respectively described by a two-dimensional electron/hole Hamiltonian with both the included Rashba spin-orbit coupling and Zeeman splitting terms. It is the Zeeman splitting, rather than the Rashba spin-orbit coupling, that destroys the time-reversal symmetry of the semiconductor systems and results in nontrivial orbital magnetization. The results show that the magnitude of the orbital magnetization per hole and the Hall conductance in the p-type bulk semiconductors are about 10^-2-10^-1 effective Bohr magneton and 10^-1-1 e^2/h, respectively. However, the orbital magnetization per electron and the Hall conductance in the n-type semiconductor heterostructures are too small to be easily observed in experiment.