Yuta Suzuki

The role of the polarization degree of freedom in lattice dynamics in solids has been underlined recently. We theoretically discover a relaxation mechanism for both linear and circular polarizations of acoustic phonons. In the absence of scattering, the polarization exhibits oscillatory behavior. This behavior leads to a counterintuitive result: unlike linear momentum, more frequent scattering events cause slower polarization relaxation due to motional narrowing. We validate this mechanism using the quantum kinetic equation. We derive the relaxation rates of polarizations analytically for isotropic elastic bodies and numerically for a cubic crystal. Remarkably, we reveal that linear polarizations relax more slowly than circular ones. Our findings provide a pathway to prolong the lifetime of phonon angular momentum by designing disorder. This improvement has the potential to advance thermal management in disordered materials, facilitate phononic information transport, and strengthen spin-phonon coupling in spintronic devices.

We study electron spin transport at the spin-splitting surface of chiral-crystalline-structured metals and the Edelstein effect at the interface, by using the Boltzmann transport equation beyond the relaxation time approximation. We first define spin relaxation time and spin diffusion length for two-dimensional systems with anisotropic spin-orbit coupling through the spectrum of the integral kernel in the collision integral. We then explicitly take account of the interface between the chiral metal and a nonmagnetic metal with finite thickness. For this composite system, we derive analytical expressions for efficiency of the charge current–spin current interconversion as well as other coefficients found in the Edelstein effect. We also develop the Onsager reciprocity in the Edelstein effect along with experiments so that it relates local input and output, which are respectively defined in the regions separated by the interface. We finally provide a transfer matrix corresponding to the Edelstein effect through the interface, with which we can easily represent the Onsager reciprocity as well as the charge-spin conversion efficiencies we have obtained. We confirm the validity of the Boltzmann transport equation in the present system starting from the Keldysh formalism in supplemental material. Our formulation also applies to the Rashba model and other spin-splitting systems.

We study electron spin transport at spin-splitting surface of chiral-crystalline-structured metals and Edelstein effect at the interface, by using the Boltzmann transport equation beyond the relaxation time approximation. We first define spin relaxation time and spin diffusion length for two-dimensional systems with anisotropic spin--orbit coupling through the spectrum of the integral kernel in the collision integral. We then explicitly take account of the interface between the chiral metal and a nonmagnetic metal with finite thickness. For this composite system, we derive analytical expressions for efficiency of the charge current--spin current interconversion as well as other coefficients found in the Edelstein effect. We also develop the Onsager's reciprocity in the Edelstein effect along with experiments so that it relates local input and output, which are respectively defined in the regions separated by the interface. We finally provide a transfer matrix corresponding to the Edelstein effect through the interface, with which we can easily represent the Onsager's reciprocity as well as the charge--spin conversion efficiencies we have obtained. We confirm the validity of the Boltzmann transport equation in the present system starting from the Keldysh formalism in the supplemental material. Our formulation also applies to the Rashba model and other spin-splitting systems.