Enhanced spin Hall effect by electron correlations in CuBi alloys

Gu, B.; Xu, Z.; Mori, Michiyasu  ; Ziman, T.*; Maekawa, Sadamichi

We find that the SHA can be dramatically enhanced by Bi impurities close to the Cu surface. The mechanisms of this enhancement are two-fold. One is that the localized impurity state on surface has a decreased hybridization and combined with Coulomb correlation effect. The other comes from the low-dimensional state of conduction electrons on surface, which results in a further enhancement of skew scattering by impurities. Furthermore, we note that a discrepancy in sign of SHA between the experiment and previous theories is simply caused by different definitions of SHA. This re-establishes skew scattering as the essential mechanism underlying the spin Hall effect in CuBi alloys.