Influence of surface scattering on the anomalous conductance plateaus in an asymmetrically biased InAs/In(0.52)Al(0.48)As quantum point contact.

We study of the appearance and evolution of several anomalous (i.e., G < G(0) D 2e(2)/h) conductance plateaus in an In(0.

All-electric quantum point contact spin-polarizer.

The controlled creation, manipulation and detection of spin-polarized currents by purely electrical means remains a central challenge of spintronics. Efforts to meet this challenge by exploiting the coupling of the electron orbital motion to its spin, in particular Rashba spin-orbit coupling, have so far been unsuccessful. Recently, it has been shown theoretically that the confining potential of a small current-carrying wire with high intrinsic spin-orbit coupling leads to the accumulation of opposite spins at opposite edges of the wire, though not to a spin-polarized current.