Journal
PHYSICAL REVIEW B
Volume 80, Issue 4, Pages -Publisher
AMER PHYSICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevB.80.041308
Keywords
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Funding
- STCU [3867]
- National Science Foundation [PHY05-51164]
- Swedish Research Council [VR-2005-3942]
- Brazilian CNPq and Ministry of Science and Technology
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We study the ground-state properties of electrons confined to a quantum wire and subject to a smoothly modulated Rashba spin-orbit coupling. When the period of the modulation becomes commensurate with the band filling, the Rashba coupling drives a quantum phase transition to a nonmagnetic insulating state. Using bosonization and a renormalization-group approach, we find that this state is robust against electron-electron interactions. The gaps to charge and spin excitations scale with the amplitude of the Rashba modulation with a common interaction-dependent exponent. An estimate of the expected size of the charge gap, using data for a gated InAs heterostructure, suggests that the effect can be put to practical use in a future spin transistor design.
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