Suppression of spin beats in magneto-oscillation phenomena in two-dimensional electron gas

Theory of magneto-oscillation phenomena has been developed for two-dimensional electron systems with linear-in-k spin splitting. Both Dresselhaus and Rashba contributions are taken into account. It has been shown that the pattern of the magnetooscillations depends drastically on the ratio between the above terms. The presence of only one type of the k-linear terms gives rise to the beats, i.e. two close harmonics corresponding to the spin-split subbands. However, if the strengths of both contributions are comparable, the third (central) harmonic appears in the spectrum of the magneto-oscillations. For equal strengths of the contributions, only the central harmonic Survives, and the oscillations occur at a single frequency, although the k-linear terms remain in the Hamiltonian. Such suppression of the spin beats is studied in detail by the example of the Shubnikov-de Haas effect. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.