Spin Separation in Cyclotron Motion

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Abstract
Charged carriers with different spin states are spatially separated in a two-dimensional hole gas. Because of strong spin-orbit interaction, holes at the Fermi energy in GaAs have different momenta for two possible spin states traveling in the same direction, and, correspondingly, different cyclotron orbits in a weak magnetic field. Two point contacts, acting as a monochromatic source of ballistic holes and a narrow detector arranged in the magnetic focusing geometry are demonstrated to work as a tunable spin filter.