Chirality-induced tunneling asymmetry at a semiconductor interface

The chiral tunneling asymmetry for the transmission through a semiconductor interface with spin-orbit coupling (SOC) and antiparallel magnetization is presented from the perspective of the transfer Hamiltonian approach. We explicitly show that the expression for the tunneling rate contains terms which are odd in the momentum along the interface thus contributing to the skew tunneling and the transverse current along the interface. These terms contain the scalar chirality that is the mixed vector product of the effective SOC and exchange fields acting on the tunneling electron or hole. The crucial role of the evanescent states in the tunneling asymmetry is revealed. It is shown that the chiral Hall effect also results in a spin injection across the interface. We finally come up with a more general view on the chiral tunneling as a universal phenomenon expected in various systems.