Generalized Onsager reciprocal relations of charge and spin transport

Abstract

In spin-orbit-coupled systems, the charge and spin transport are generally coupled to each other, namely, a charge current will induce a spin current and vice versa. In the presence of time-reversal symmetry T, the cross-coupling transport coefficients describing how one process affects the other are constrained by the famous Onsager reciprocal relations. In this paper, we generalize the Onsager reciprocal relations of charge and spin transport to systems that break the time-reversal symmetry but preserve a combined symmetry of T and some other symmetry operation O. We show that the symmetry or antisymmetry of the cross-coupling transport coefficients remains in place provided that the operator O meets certain conditions. Among many candidate systems where our generalized Onsager relations apply, we focus on a conceptually simple and experimentally realized model in cold atomic systems for explicit demonstration and use these relations to predict highly nontrivial transport phenomena that can be readily verified experimentally.