Chirality-Induced Spin Selectivity (CISS) Effect

Abstract

One of the manifestations of chirality-induced spin selectivity (CISS) is the appearance of a magnetocurrent. Magnetocurrent is the observation that the charge currents at finite bias in a two terminal device for opposite magnetizations of one of the leads differ. Magnetocurrents can only occur in the presence of interactions of the electrons either with vibrational modes or among themselves through the Coulomb interaction. In experiments on chiral molecules assembled in monolayers, the magnetocurrent seems to be dominantly cubic (odd) in bias voltage while theory finds a dominantly even bias voltage dependence. Thus far, theoretical work has predicted a magnetocurrent which is even bias. Here we analyze the bias voltage dependence of the magnetocurrent numerically and analytically involving the spin-orbit and Coulomb interactions (through the Hartree-Fock and Hubbard One approximations). For both approximations it is found that for strong Coulomb interactions the magnetocurrent is dominantly odd in bias voltage, confirming the symmetry observed in experiment.