In the past ten years or so 'Spintronics' has evolved into a central part of solid state physics that addresses the intimate relation of electron charge and spin transport. To date, it is a huge field covering topics that range from applied micromagnetics to quantum computing. This invited focus issue of New Journal of Physics has become possible only by focusing on structures with 'reduced dimensions', which can be realized in semiconductor, molecular and carbon-based systems.

Injection and detection of spin accumulation in non-magnetic materials using ferromagnetic contacts is at the root of spintronics. Ferromagnetic semiconductors attract much interest as bulk materials and as contacts. Recent years have seen a surge of interest in spin generation by spin orbit coupling in otherwise non-magnetic materials, leading to the observation of, e.g., the Aharonov–Casher and spin Hall effects. Molecular spintronics, including carbon nanotubes and graphene, is the newest branch of our field.

This focus issue attempts to provide an overview of the ongoing basic research in the field. The issue contains invited papers from leading theoreticians and experimentalists studying spintronics in reduced dimensions in different materials. The collected papers give an up-to-date perspective of a multi-facetted field, which in our opinion is still far from reaching its peak. We hope the reader will enjoy perusing these papers as much as we enjoyed collecting them.

The articles below represent the first accepted contributions and further additions will appear in the near future.

Focus on Spintronics in Reduced Dimensions Contents

Single spin universal Boolean logic gate
H Agarwal, S Pramanik and S Bandyopadhyay

Zeeman ratchets: pure spin current generation in mesoscopic conductors with non-uniform magnetic fields
Matthias Scheid, Dario Bercioux and Klaus Richter

Extracting current-induced spins: spin boundary conditions at narrow Hall contacts
İ Adagideli, M Scheid, M Wimmer, G E W Bauer and K Richter

Phase transition between the quantum spin Hall and insulator phases in 3D: emergence of a topological gapless phase
Shuichi Murakami

Magnetic focusing of charge carriers from spin-split bands: semiclassics of a Zitterbewegung effect
U Zülicke, J Bolte and R Winkler

Detailed transport investigation of the magnetic anisotropy of (Ga,Mn)As
K Pappert, C Gould, M Sawicki, J Wenisch, K Brunner, G Schmidt and L W Molenkamp

Electronic states of magnetic quantum dots
Ramin M Abolfath, Pawel Hawrylak and Igor Zutic

Mesoscopic fluctuations of spin currents
Yuli V Nazarov

TAMR effect in (Ga,Mn)As-based tunnel structures
M Ciorga, M Schlapps, A Einwanger, S Geißler, J Sadowski, W Wegscheider and D Weiss

Anomalous Hall effect in spin-polarized two-dimensional electron gases with Rashba spin–orbit interaction
Takashi Kato, Yasuhito Ishikawa, Hiroyoshi Itoh and Jun-ichiro Inoue

Spin photocurrents in (110)-grown quantum well structures
H Diehl, V A Shalygin, V V Bel'kov, Ch Hoffmann, S N Danilov, T Herrle, S A Tarasenko, D Schuh, Ch Gerl, W Wegscheider, W Prettl and S D Ganichev

Spin transport across carbon nanotube quantum dots
Sonja Koller, Leonhard Mayrhofer and Milena Grifoni

Local Hanle-effect studies of spin drift and diffusion in n:GaAs epilayers and spin-transport devices
M Furis, D L Smith, S Kos, E S Garlid, K S M Reddy, C J Palmstrøm, P A Crowell and S A Crooker

Spin dynamics in rolled-up two-dimensional electron gases
Maxim Trushin and John Schliemann

Spin injection in quantum wells with spatially dependent rashba interaction
Arne Brataas, A G Mal'shukov and Yaroslav Tserkovnyak

Magneto-transport through single-molecule magnets: Kondo-peaks, zero-bias dips, molecular symmetry and Berry's phase
Maarten R Wegewijs, Christian Romeike, Herbert Schoeller and Walter Hofstetter

Spin-Hall conductivity of a spin-polarized two-dimensional electron gas with Rashba spin–orbit interaction and magnetic impurities
C P Moca and D C Marinescu

Dimensionally constrained D'yakonov–Perel' spin relaxation in n-InGaAs channels: transition from 2D to 1D
A W Holleitner, V Sih, R C Myers, A C Gossard and D D Awschalom

Time reversal Aharonov–Casher effect using Rashba spin–orbit interaction
Junsaku Nitta and Tobias Bergsten

Gerrit E W Bauer, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
Laurens W Molenkamp, Universität Wuerzburg, Germany