Persistent spin texture enforced by symmetry

Persistent spin texture is the property of some materials to maintain a uniform spin configuration in momentum space. This property is predicted to support an extraordinarily long spin lifetime of carriers promising for spintronics applications. The persistent spin texture is known to emerge when the the Rashba and linear Dresselhaus SOC, are equal. This condition, however, is not trivial to achieve and requires tuning the Rashba and Dresselhaus parameters, as has been demonstrated using semiconductor quantum-well structures. Here we predict that there exist a class of non-centrosymmetric bulk materials where the persistent spin texture is enforced by the non-symmorphic space-group symmetry of the crystal. At certain high symmetry points in the Brillouin zone, the SOC combined with the lattice degrees of freedom imposes a constraint on the effective Hamiltonian, which only retains terms with the spin-orbit field independent of the momentum orientation, thus maintaining the persistent spin texture. We illustrate this behavior using density-functional theory calculations for bulk perovskite BiInO₃, which reveals the persistent spin texture at the conduction band minimum. Our results broaden the range of materials which can be employed in spintronics.