Equilibrium circular photogalvanic effect in a hybrid superconductor-semiconductor system.

A dc electric current can be induced in a hybrid semiconductor-superconductor system under illumination of it by a circularly polarized light with the frequency below the energy of semiconductor interband transitions. In conditions when the light beam is unable to create real electron-hole excitations, this phenomenon is reminiscent of the Meissner effect in the static magnetic field. Such an effect can be employed in systems combining cavity photons and superconducting quantum circuits.

Spin cloud induced around an elastic scatterer by the intrinsic spin hall effect.

Similar to the Landauer electric dipole created around an impurity by the electric current, a spin polarized cloud of electrons can be induced by the intrinsic spin Hall effect near a spin independent elastic scatterer. It is shown that in the ballistic range around the impurity, such a cloud appears in the case of Rashba spin-orbit interaction, even though the bulk spin Hall current is absent.

Spin Hall effect on edge magnetization and electric conductance of a 2D semiconductor strip.

The intrinsic spin Hall effect on spin accumulation and electric conductance in a diffusive regime of a 2D electron gas has been studied for a 2D strip of a finite width. It is shown that the spin polarization near the flanks of the strip, as well as the electric current in the longitudinal direction, exhibit damped oscillations as a function of the width and strength of the Dresselhaus spin-orbit interaction. Cubic terms of this interaction are crucial for spin accumulation near the edges.

Strain-induced coupling of spin current to nanomechanical oscillations.

We propose a setup which allows us to couple the electron spin degree of freedom to the mechanical motions of a nanomechanical system not involving any of the ferromagnetic components. The proposed method employs the strain-induced spin-orbit interaction of electrons in narrow gap semiconductors. We have shown how this method can be used for detection and manipulation of the spin flow through a suspended rod in a nanomechanical device.

Opto-thermionic refrigeration in semiconductor heterostructures.

Combining the ideas of laser cooling and thermionic cooling, we have proposed an opto-thermionic cooling process, and investigated its cooling effect caused by the light emission from a quantum well embedded into a semiconductor pn junction. For a GaAs/AlGaAs opto-thermionic refrigerator in which the Auger recombination is the major nonradiative process, cooling can be achieved in a finite range of bias voltage. Using the measured values of the Auger coefficient, our calculated cooling rate is at least several watts/cm(2).