Non-Abelian hydrodynamics and the flow of spin in spin-orbit coupled substances

DOI10.1016/J.AOP.2007.06.012MaRDI QIDQ2482047zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors B. W. A. Leurs, Zaira Nazario, David I. Santiago, J. Zaanen

Publication date 16 April 2008

Published in Annals of Physics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/0705.2953

Aharonov-Casher effect non-Abelian flow spin-orbit coupling spintronics superfluidity

Transport processes in time-dependent statistical mechanics (82C70) Statistical mechanics of random media, disordered materials (including liquid crystals and spin glasses) (82D30) Statistical mechanics of superfluids (82D50)

Abstract: Motivated by heavy ion collision experiments, we study the hydrodynamic properties of non-Abelian systems. These issues arise in condensed matter physics in the context of transport of spins in the presence of spin orbit coupling: the Pauli Hamiltonian governing the leading relativistic corrections in condensed matter systems can be rewritten in a language of SU(2) covariant derivatives, where the role of the non-Abelian gauge fields is taken by the physical electromagnetic fields. Taking a similar perspective as Jackiw and coworkers, we show that non-abelian hydrodynamical currents can be factored in a non-coherent 'classical' part, and a coherent part requiring macroscopic non-abelian quantum entanglement. Non-abelian flow being thus a much richer affair than familiar hydrodynamics, permits us to classify the various spin transport phenomena in in condensed matter physics in a unifying framework.In semiconductor spintronics, the absence of hydrodynamics is well known, but in our formulation it is directly associated with the fact that non-abelian currents are only covariantly conserved.We analyze the quantum mechanical single particle currents of relevance to mesoscopic transport with as highlight the Aharonov-Casher effect, where we demonstrate that the non-abelian transport structure renders it much more fragile than its abelian counterpart, the Aharonov-Bohm effect. We subsequently focus on spin flows protected by order parameters, of which the spin-spiral magnets and the spin superfluids are important examples. The surprising bonus is that the presence of an order parameter, being single-valued, restores hydrodynamics. We demonstrate a new effect: the trapping of electrical line charge, being the 'fixed frame' non-Abelian analogue of the familiar magnetic flux trapping by superconductors.

Review text

A pervasive problem today in physics is the analysis of the dynamics of non-Abelian structures over macroscpic distances, or shortly non-Abelian hydrodynamics. The present paper is a review related to spin transport in the presence of spin-orbit coupling, considered in an approach via the non-Abelian parallel transport principle. The purpose of the paper is to show that several spin transport phenomena in condensed matter are different effects of the same non-Abelian unifying model. In this framework, various features of spin-orbit coupled systems are analyzed as well as spin superfluids. The paper finishes with a detailed study of the \(^3\)He structure

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