Magneto-anisotropic weak antilocalization in near-surface quantum wells

We investigate the effects of an in-plane magnetic field on the weak antilocalization signature of near-surface quantum wells lacking bulk and inversion symmetry. The measured magnetoconductivity exhibits a strong anisotropy with respect to the direction of the in-plane magnetic field. The two-fold symmetry of the observed magneto-anisotropy originates from the competition between Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit couplings. The high sensitivity of the weak antilocalization to the spin texture produced by the combined Zeeman and spin-orbit fields results in very large anisotropy ratios, reaching 100%. Using a semiclassical universal model in quantitative agreement with the experimental data, we uniquely determine the values of the Dresselhaus and Rashba parameters as well as the effective in-plane g-factor of the electrons. Understanding these parameters provides new prospects for novel applications ranging from spintronics to topological quantum computing. , the Hamiltonian includes additional terms that make the electron g-factor anisotropic. We show that these terms are negligible compared to the Zeeman splitting g (cid:107) µ B B (cid:107) · σ extracted from magnetoconductivity measurements or compared to the strength of spin-orbit coupling.

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