Nondissipative Spin Hall Effect via Quantized Edge Transport

Abstract

The spin Hall effect in a two-dimensional electron system on honeycomb lattice with both intrinsic and Rashba spin-orbit couplings is studied numerically. Integer quantized spin Hall conductance is obtained at the zero Rashba coupling limit when electron Fermi energy lies in the energy gap created by the intrinsic spin-orbit coupling, in agreement with recent theoretical prediction. While nonzero Rashba coupling destroys electron spin conservation, the spin Hall conductance is found to remain near the quantized value, being insensitive to disorder scattering, until the energy gap collapses with increasing the Rashba coupling. We further show that the charge transport through counterpropagating spin-polarized edge channels is well quantized, which is associated with a topological invariant of the system.