Prediction of giant intrinsic spin-Hall effect in strained p-GaAs quantum wells

We perform spin resolved non-equilibrium Green's function calculations in nanostructured, strained two-dimensional GaAs electron and hole gases. Inelastic scattering is taken into account. We show theoretically that the intrinsic inverse spin-Hall effect provides a simple, sensitive, and purely electrical scheme to measure the spin polarization in nanostructures. We predict large spin polarizations and spin-Hall voltages for several concrete device geometries. We propose tensile strained p-GaAs as being optimally suited for detecting the inverse spin Hall effect and show that the effect is absent in n-GaAs.