Direction dependence of the magneto-optical absorption in nanowires with Rashba interaction

We study the directional dependence of the absorption spectrum of ballistic nanowires in the presence of gate-controlled Rashba spin-orbit interaction and an in-plane magnetic field. In the weak Rashba regime, our analytical and numerical results show that the absorption peaks associated with the first and third intersubband transitions exhibit frequency shifts and strong amplitude modulations as the direction of the magnetic field changes. If the field is parallel to the nanowire axis, these peaks disappear and the resonance frequencies of the whole absorption spectrum are given merely in terms of the Zeeman splitting and the energy scale characterizing the confinement potential. The second transition has an absorption peak that suffers an opposite frequency shift with amplitude that is largely direction independent. The amplitude modulation and frequency shift of the absorption spectrum is periodic in the angle that the magnetic field makes with the nanowire axis.