Spin-charge conversion in disordered two-dimensional electron gases lacking inversion symmetry

We study the spin-charge conversion mechanisms in a two-dimensional gas of electrons moving in a smooth disorder potential by accounting for both Rashba-type and Mott's skew scattering contributions. We find that the quantum interference effects between spin-flip and skew scattering give rise to anisotropic spin precession scattering (ASP), a direct spin-charge conversion mechanism that was discovered in an earlier study of graphene decorated with adatoms [Huang et al., Phys. Rev. B 94, 085414 (2016)]. Our findings suggest that, together with other spin-charge conversion mechanisms such as the inverse galvanic effect, ASP is a fairly universal phenomenon that should be present in disordered two-dimensional systems lacking inversion symmetry.