Conductance of a quantum point contact in the presence of spin-orbit interaction

A recursive Green's function technique is developed to calculate the spin-dependent conductance in mesoscopic structures. Using this technique, we study the spin-dependent electronic transport of quantum point contacts in the presence of the Rashba spin-orbit interaction. We observed that some oscillations in the "quantized" conductance are induced by the spin-orbit interaction, and suggest that the oscillations may stem from the spin-orbit coupling associated multiple reflections. It is also indicated that the 0.7 structure of the conductance observed in mesoscopic experiments would not arise from the spin-orbit interaction. (C) 2002 American Institute of Physics.