Voltage controlled spin precession

A recent experiment reports a non-local spin-signal that shows oscillatory behavior as a function of gate voltage when the contacts are magnetized along the direction of current flow, but not when they are magnetized perpendicular to the current, in agreement with the predictions from a simple theory. In this paper we first present a straightforward extension of this theory to include the angular spectrum of electrons and the extended injecting and detecting contacts. The results are in good agreement with those from a non-equilibrium Green function (NEGF)- based model with contact parameters adjusted to fit the experimental contact conductances. They also describe certain aspects of the experiment fairly well, but other aspects deserve further investigation.