Out-of-plane anisotropic magnetoconductance in a spin-orbit-coupled two-dimensional electron gas

We investigate the out-of-plane anisotropic magnetoconductance (OAMC) in a Rashba spin-orbit-coupled two-dimensional system. For short-range nonmagnetic scattering, we obtain the vanishing of the OAMC when both bands are occupied, and it emerges when the Fermi energy only crosses the majority band. In the presence of remote charged electron-impurity scattering, it is found that OAMC appears even when both bands are occupied, and it may be negative for small spin-orbital interaction, which is in contrast to the in-plane configuration. Due to the van-Hove singularity in the density of state, a sudden decrease of OAMC occurs when the magnetization equals the Fermi energy in the absence of magnetization. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.