Elastic spin-Hall effect in mechanical graphene

Abstract

We show that spin–orbit interaction and elastic spin-Hall effect can exist in a classical mechanical system consisting of a two-dimensional honeycomb lattice of masses and springs. The band structure shows the presence of splitting at K point induced by the difference of longitudinal and transverse elastic constant, and this splitting can be regarded as an effective Dresselhaus-type spin–orbit coupling. Interestingly, as an initial displacement away from the equilibrium is applied, the time evolution simulation shows that waves of different spin polarization propagates along different directions at the Γ and K point, which is characteristic of spin-Hall effect. Several cases for spin-Hall effect are also discussed.

Keywords

• spin–orbit coupling
• graphene
• spin Hall effect
• mechanical vibration