In 1984, Bychkov and Rashba introduced a simple form of spin-orbit coupling to explain the peculiarities of electron spin resonance in two-dimensional semiconductors. Over the past 30 years, Rashba spin-orbit coupling has inspired a vast number of predictions, discoveries and innovative concepts far beyond semiconductors. The past decade has been particularly creative, with the realizations of manipulating spin orientation by moving electrons in space, controlling electron trajectories using spin as a steering wheel, and the discovery of new topological classes of materials. This progress has reinvigorated the interest of physicists and materials scientists in the development of inversion asymmetric structures, ranging from layered graphene-like materials to cold atoms. This Review discusses relevant recent and ongoing realizations of Rashba physics in condensed matter.

Magnetic devices are a leading contender for the implementation of memory and logic technologies that are non-volatile, that can scale to high density and high speed, and that do not wear out. However, widespread application of magnetic memory and logic devices will require the development of efficient mechanisms for reorienting their magnetization using the least possible current and power. There has been considerable recent progress in this effort; in particular, it has been discovered that spin-orbit interactions in heavy-metal/ferromagnet bilayers can produce strong current-driven torques on the magnetic layer, via the spin Hall effect in the heavy metal or the Rashba-Edelstein effect in the ferromagnet. In the search for materials to provide even more efficient spin-orbit-induced torques, some proposals have suggested topological insulators, which possess a surface state in which the effects of spin-orbit coupling are maximal in the sense that an electron's spin orientation is fixed relative to its propagation direction. Here we report experiments showing that charge current flowing in-plane in a thin film of the topological insulator bismuth selenide (Bi2Se3) at room temperature can indeed exert a strong spin-transfer torque on an adjacent ferromagnetic permalloy (Ni81Fe19) thin film, with a direction consistent with that expected from the topological surface state. We find that the strength of the torque per unit charge current density in Bi2Se3 is greater than for any source of spin-transfer torque measured so far, even for non-ideal topological insulator films in which the surface states coexist with bulk conduction. Our data suggest that topological insulators could enable very efficient electrical manipulation of magnetic materials at room temperature, for memory and logic applications.

Antiferromagnetic materials could represent the future of spintronic applications thanks to the numerous interesting features they combine: they are robust against perturbation due to magnetic fields, produce no stray fields, display ultrafast dynamics, and are capable of generating large magnetotransport effects. Intense research efforts over the past decade have been invested in unraveling spin transport properties in antiferromagnetic materials. Whether spin transport can be used to drive the antiferromagnetic order and how subsequent variations can be detected are some of the thrilling challenges currently being addressed. Antiferromagnetic spintronics started out with studies on spin transfer and has undergone a definite revival in the last few years with the publication of pioneering articles on the use of spin-orbit interactions in antiferromagnets. This paradigm shift offers possibilities for radically new concepts for spin manipulation in electronics. Central to these endeavors are the need for predictive models, relevant disruptive materials, and new experimental designs. This paper reviews the most prominent spintronic effects described based on theoretical and experimental analysis of antiferromagnetic materials. It also details some of the remaining bottlenecks and suggests possible avenues for future research. This review covers both spin-transfer-related effects, such as spin-transfer torque, spin penetration length, domain-wall motion, and "magnetization" dynamics, and spin-orbit related phenomena, such as (tunnel) anisotropic magnetoresistance, spin Hall, and inverse spin galvanic effects. Effects related to spin caloritronics, such as the spin Seebeck effect, are linked to the transport of magnons in antiferromagnets. The propagation of spin waves and spin superfluids in antiferromagnets is also covered.

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In a single nanomagnet with spin-orbit interactions, the electrical current can generate a nonequilibrium spin density that gives rise to a spin torque on the magnetization. This spin torque does not involve spin transfer mechanism and originates from the band structure itself. We show that this spin torque can be effectively used to switch the direction of the magnetization and the critical switching current density could be as low as 10 4-10 6 A / cm 2 for a number of magnetic systems. Several magnetic systems for possible experimental realization are discussed.

In bilayer nanowires consisting of a ferromagnetic layer and a nonmagnetic layer with strong spin-orbit coupling, currents create torques on the magnetization beyond those found in simple ferromagnetic nanowires. The resulting magnetic dynamics appear to require torques that can be separated into two terms, dampinglike and fieldlike. The dampinglike torque is typically derived from models describing the bulk spin Hall effect and the spin transfer torque, and the fieldlike torque is typically derived from a Rashba model describing interfacial spin-orbit coupling. We derive a model based on the Boltzmann equation that unifies these approaches. We also consider an approximation to the Boltzmann equation, the drift-diffusion model, that qualitatively reproduces the behavior, but quantitatively differs in some regimes. We show that the Boltzmann equation with physically reasonable parameters can match the torques for any particular sample, but in some cases, it fails to describe the experimentally observed thickness dependencies.

KAUST RepositoryWe predict that a lateral electrical current in antiferromagnets can induce nonequilibrium Néel-order fields, i.e., fields whose sign alternates between the spin sublattices, which can trigger ultrafast spin-axis reorientation. Based on microscopic transport theory calculations we identify staggered current-induced fields analogous to the intraband and to the intrinsic interband spin-orbit fields previously reported in ferromagnets with a broken inversion-symmetry crystal. To illustrate their rich physics and utility, we consider bulk Mn 2 Au with the two spin sublattices forming inversion partners, and a 2D square-lattice antiferromagnet with broken structural inversion symmetry modeled by a Rashba spin-orbit coupling. We propose an antiferromagnetic memory device with electrical writing and reading.

The perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) arising at the interface between ferromagnetic transition metals and metallic oxides was investigated via first-principles calculations. In this work very large values of PMA, up to 3 erg/cm 2 , at Fe|MgO interfaces are reported, in agreement with recent experiments. The origin of PMA is attributed to overlap between O-p z and transition metal d z 2 orbitals hybridized with d xz(yz) orbitals with stronger spin-orbit coupling-induced splitting around the Fermi level for perpendicular magnetization orientation. Furthermore, it is shown that the PMA value weakens in the case of over-or underoxidation due to the fact that oxygen p z and transition metal d z 2 orbital overlap is strongly affected by disorder, in agreement with experimental observations in magnetic tunnel junctions.