Spintronics: Fundamentals and applications

Spintronics, or spin electronics, involves the study of active control and manipulation of spin degrees of freedom in solid-state systems. This article reviews the current status of this subject, including both recent advances and well-established results. The primary focus is on the basic physical principles underlying the generation of carrier spin polarization, spin dynamics, and spin-polarized transport in semiconductors and metals. Spin transport differs from charge transport in that spin is a nonconserved quantity in solids due to spin-orbit and hyperfine coupling. The authors discuss in detail spin decoherence mechanisms in metals and semiconductors. Various theories of spin injection and spin-polarized transport are applied to hybrid structures relevant to spin-based devices and fundamental studies of materials properties. Experimental work is reviewed with the emphasis on projected applications, in which external electric and magnetic fields and illumination by light will be used to control spin and charge dynamics to create new functionalities not feasible or ineffective with conventional electronics.Comment: invited review, 36 figures, 900+ references; minor stylistic changes from the published versio

Photon generation in ferromagnetic point contacts

We show theoretically that a significant spin accumulation can occur in electric point contacts between two ferromagnetic electrodes with different magnetizations. Under appropriate conditions an inverse population of spin-split electronic levels results in stimulated emission of photons in the presence of a resonant electromagnetic field. The intensity of the emitted radiation can be several orders of magnitude higher than in typical semiconductor laser materials for two reasons. (1) The density of conduction electrons in a metal point conduct is much larger than in semiconductors. (2) The strength of the coupling between the electron spins and the electromagnetic field that is responsible for the radiative spin-flip transitions is set by the magnetic exchange energy and can therefore be very large as suggested by Kadigrobov et al. [Europhys. Lett. 67, 948 (2004)]