Staggered Spin Hall Conductivity

Phys. Rev. B 102, 195146 (2020)https://ireap.umd.edu/10.1103/PhysRevB.102.1951462020Journal ArticleAdvanced Materials and Nanotechnology

The intrinsic spin Hall effect plays an important role in spintronics applications, such as spin-orbit torque-based memory. The bulk space group symmetry determines the form of the bulk spin current conductivity tensor. This paper considers materials for which the local point group symmetry of individual atoms is lower than the global (bulk) symmetry. This enables a position-dependent spin current response, with additional tensor components allowed relative to the bulk response. We present a general method to compute the position-dependent intrinsic spin Hall conductivity, with similar computational effort relative to computing the bulk spin Hall conductivity.