Electronic Spin Filter via Spin Superlattice

Recently there was a proposal for a spin filter by using the spin superlattice structure. In a certain energy range, the proposed structure exhibits a high spin filtering efficiency close to 100%. Unfortunately such energy range turns out to be narrow. In this paper, we report a method to widen the energy range by using an analogy to optical anti-reflection coating. In optics, it is well known that a stack of alternating layers of two dielectric materials can function as a highly transmissive or reflective filter for wide range of wavelength. Since electrons also have wave character as light, it would be possible to make an electronic analog of an optical filter. We demonstrate that alternating layers of two materials with different g-factors can function as a spin filter that allows electrons to be transmitted only when their spins point towards a certain particular direction. This spin-superlattice-based spin filter operates in wide energy ranges, curing the problem in the previous proposal.