Sensitively Temperature-Dependent Spin Orbit Coupling in SrIrO3 Thin Films

Abstract: Spin orbit coupling plays a non-perturbation effect in many recently developed novel fields including topological insulators and spin-orbit assistant Mott insulators. In this paper, strongly temperature-dependent spin orbit coupling, revealed by weak anti-localization, is observed at low temperature in 5d strongly correlated compound, SrIrO3. As the temperature rising, increase rate of Rashba coefficient is nearly 30%-45%/K. The increase is nearly 100 times over that observed in semiconductor heterostructures. Microscopically, the large increase of Rashba coefficient is attributed to the significant evolution of effective Land\'e g factor on temperature, whose mechanism is discussed. Sensitively temperature-dependent spin orbit coupling in SrIrO3 might be applied in spintronic devices