Manifestation of the spin Hall effect through charge-transport in the mesoscopic regime

We study theoretically the manifestation of the spin Hall effect in a two-dimensional electronic system with Rashba spin-orbit coupling via dc-transport measurements in realistic mesoscopic H-shape structures. The Landauer-Buttiker formalism is used to model samples with mobilities and Rashba coupling strengths of current experiments and to demonstrate the appearance of a measurable Rashba-coupling dependent voltage. This type of measurement requires only metal contacts, i.e., no magnetic elements are present. We also confirm the robustness of the intrinsic spin Hall effect against disorder in the mesoscopic metallic regime in agreement with results of exact diagonalization studies in the bulk.