Rashba Effect at 35

Last year was the 35th anniversary of the seminal paper by Bychkov and Rashba which introduced a spin-orbit coupling which is now known as “the Rashba effect“. It is a beautiful piece of physics that brings a bit of relativity into condensed matter world. Turns out, in an electric field (or under a broken symmetry) electron spins in a solid can behave as if they are in a magnetic field.

Anyhow, 35 years later the Rashba effect lives on and find itself at the frontiers of some of the hottest research of the 21-st century, as you can convince yourself by arxiving it (it is like googling but with arxiv.org).

So a few months ago Aurelien Manchon approached me and several other folks to be part of a review of what is the face of Rashba effect 35 years later. As with all manuscripts, preparation took forever, so we are celebrating the 35th birthday of Rashba effect one year later. But finally the paper it out there and we are hoping it can serve those who want to know how Rashba spin-orbit physics beats along with spintronics, quantum computing, topological physics and cold atomic research.

I learned a lot about spin-orbit interaction myself from working on this review, I also learned the difference between stirring and steering, as in ‘steering wheel’ not ‘stirring wheel’ (thank you, anonymous referee!).