Theory Department
Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics
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Meier, F., Petrov, V., Mirhosseini, H., Patthey, L., Henk, J., Osterwalder, J., Dil, J. H.

Interference of spin states in photoemission from Sb/Ag(111) surface alloys
Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter 23, (7),pp 072207/1-6 (2011)
Using a three-dimensional spin polarimeter we have gathered evidence for the interference of spin states in photoemission from the surface alloy Sb/Ag(111). This system features a small Rashba-type spin splitting of a size comparable to the momentum broadening of the quasiparticles, thus causing an intrinsic overlap between states with orthogonal spinors. Besides a small spin polarization caused by the spin splitting, we observe a large spin polarization component in the plane normal to the quantization axis of the Rashba effect. Strongly suggestive of coherent spin rotation, this effect is largely independent of the photon energy and photon polarization.

TH-2011-02