Observation of electric current induced by optically injected spin current

Linearly polarized light at normal incidence injects a spin current into a strip of two-dimensional electron gas with Rashba spin-orbit coupling. The authors report observation of an electric current when such light is shed on the vincinity of the junction in a crossbar-shaped InGaAs/InAlAs quantum well Rashba system. The polarization dependence of this electric current was experimentally observed to be the same as that of the spin current. The authors attribute the observed electric current to the scattering of the optically injected spin current at the crossing. (c) 2007 American Institute of Physics.