Tunneling conductance of a metal/two-dimensional electron gas with Rashba spin-orbit coupling junction within a lattice model

The charge transport in an infinite two-dimensional system of a normal metal and a two-dimensional electron gas with Rashba spin orbit coupling was studied. The square lattice model is used to describe the electronic properties in each region. Especially, we developed an appropriate way to take into account the quality of the interface to calculate the transport properties of a particle in the junction. We focused on the effects of the spin-conserved and the spin-flip scattering potential on the overall tunneling conductance. It was found that the conductance spectrum can be enhanced by increasing equally the two types of the interfacial scattering value. The conductance spectrum appears to have characteristic kink features when the Fermi level reaches the coincidence of the Rashba band interaction for both the top and bottom of the band. The kinks reflect the difference in the nature of the electron-like and hole-like energy contours of the energy band. In addition, the Rashba energy is predicted not only from the energy spacing between the onset and the first kink of the conductance spectrum, but also from the energy spacing between the second kink and the offset of the conductance spectrum. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.