Temperature dependence of the Rashba and Dresselhaus spin–orbit interactions in GaAs wells

We have recently shown [Fu and Egues, Phys. Rev. B 91 (2015) 075408] unusual properties of the spin–orbit (SO) interaction in relatively wide quantum wells, e.g., the second subband Rashba term can vanish even in asymmetric configurations. Here we report our theoretical investigation on the temperature dependence of Rashba and Dresselhaus SO interactions in GaAs both relatively narrow and wide wells, having the electron occupancy of one and two subbands, respectively. We consider all relevant intra- and intersubband SO terms. We find that the variation of intrasubband couplings as temperatures range from 0.3 to 300 K could attain, ∼meV Å, the order of usual magnitudes for SO terms in GaAs wells. Moreover, we observe distinct behaviors of the SO interaction of the two subbands, as functions of temperature. On the other band, we find that the intersubband SO terms have a relatively weak temperature dependence.