We investigate the lateral displacements for ballistic electron beams in a two-dimensional electron gas modulated by metallic ferromagnetic (FM) stripes with parallel and antiparallel (AP) magnetization configurations. It is shown that the displacements are negative as well as positive, which can be controlled by adjusting the electric potential induced by the applied voltage and the magnetic field strength of FM stripes. Based on these phenomena, we propose an efficient way to realize a spin beam splitter, which can completely separate spin-up and spin-down electron beams in the AP configuration by their corresponding spatial positions.

• Received 13 December 2007

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.77.073307