Speaker
Description
Abstract body goes here.Spin-orbit coupling (SOC)—a relativistic interaction which entangles a particle’s motion with its quantum mechanical spin—is fundamental to a wide range of physical phenomena, spanning from the formation of topological insulators to the spin Hall effect of light. Recent years have seen remarkable progress in the probing, enhancing and tailoring of SOC in artificial materials, specifically heterostructures, made of two or more individual flakes of graphene-like crystals arranged in a stack. From the electrical control of spin-valley coupling in bilayer graphene to the reversible spin-charge conversion in graphene with proximity-induced SOC courtesy of atomically-thin semiconductors, these discoveries challenge our previous notions on the possible behavior of spin-orbit coupled electrons at hetero-interfaces.
In this talk, I will focus on the spin-orbit physics of graphene-based van der Waals heterostructures and show that they are sensitive to the atomic registry between graphene and its high-SOC partner material. This opens up interesting possibilities for spin-charge interconversion, such as a spin Hall effect tunable by means of a simple interlayer rotation angle. A new proposal for the lateral patterning of spin-orbit fields in these systems, leading to pronounced quantum geometric effects, will be briefly discussed. Finally, I will present recent work using accurate transport methods to understand the microscopic origin of orbital Hall effects in realistic (disordered) 2D materials, including the discoveries of an orbital version of skew scattering without SOC and the crucial role played by the symmetries of scattering centers.
