1212.3325 (Yue Ban et al.)

Spin dynamics in tunneling decay of a metastable state    [PDF]

Yue Ban, E. Ya. Sherman

We analyze spin dynamics in the tunneling decay of a metastable localized state in the presence of spin-orbit coupling. We find that the spin polarization at short time scales is affected by the initial state while at long time scales both the probability- and the spin density exhibit diffraction-in-time phenomenon. We find that in addition to the tunneling time the tunneling in general can be characterized by a new parameter, the tunneling length. Although the tunneling length is independent on the spin-orbit coupling, it can be accessed by the spin rotation measurement.

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1212.3325