Bound Electron Pairs Formed by the Spin–Orbit Interaction in 2D Gated Structures

The bound electron pairs (BEPs) arising due to the pair spin–orbit interaction (PSOI) in 2D structures are explored with a gate that allows the BEPs to be manipulated. The gate breaks the in-plane reflection symmetry of the pair Coulomb field and creates a one-particle Rashba spin–orbit interaction. It is found that the normal component of the electric field substantially affects the BEPs but the key role in forming the BEPs belongs to the in-plane component. The ground state of a BEP with zero total momentum, which is doubly degenerate in the absence of the gate, splits into two states. One of them is tunable by varying the gate voltage, whereas the other is on the contrary robust. The tunable BEP has a higher binding energy which grows as the gate voltage increases, with its orbital and spin structure changing continuously. At large negative voltage, the tunable BEP decays. The orbital and spin structure of the robust BEP does not depend on the gate voltage. Its energy level crosses the conduction band bottom at high gate voltage of any polarity, but the robust BEP remains bound and localized even when in continuum.