Doctoral Thesis: Optimization and modeling of the spin hall effect in dilute alloys: a theoretical study

This work studies the extrinsic contributions to the spin Hall effect. The description of electronic structure is based on density functional theory by means of a relativistic Korringa-Kohn-Rostoker Green function method. The electronic and spin transport calculations for skew scattering applied to ultrathin bismuth-doped noble metal films are conducted in the framework of a linearized Boltzmann equation. The computations predict colossal spin Hall effects with spin Hall angles up to about 80% for one-monolayer films. It is shown that the required resonant scattering can be tuned by strain engineering, which deposits the film on an appropriate substrate. The description of bulk systems utilizes a generalized phase shift model, which demonstrates a subtle interplay between spin-orbit and potential scattering in different angular-momentum channels. First steps towards a semiclassical ab initio description of the side-jump mechanism are made by two approaches.

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