INTENSITY CORRELATIONS IN ELECTRONIC-WAVE PROPAGATION IN A DISORDERED MEDIUM - THE INFLUENCE OF SPIN-ORBIT SCATTERING

We obtain explicit expressions for the correlation functions of transmission and reflection coefficients of coherent electronic waves propagating through a disordered quasi-one-dimensional mediUM with purely elastic diffusive scattering in the presence of spin-orbit interactions. We find in the metallic regime both large local intensity fluctuations and long-range correlations which ultimately lead to universal conductance fluctuations. We show that the main effect of spin-orbit scattering is to suppress both local and long-range intensity fluctuations by a universal symmetry factor 4. We use a scattering approach based on random transfer matrices.