Rashba effect in antimony and bismuth studied by spin-resolved ARPES

We have performed spin- and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy of antimony (Sb) and bismuth (Bi) thin films grown on Si(111) to elucidate the nature of the Rashba effect in the spin-split surface bands. In Sb, we revealed spin polarization with the in-plane vortical texture on an elongated hole-like Fermi surface. The spin polarization is strongly momentum-dependent, almost vanishing at the region away from the Brillouin zone center. Such unusual suppression of the spin polarization is not observed in Bi, pointing to a strong influence from the quantized bulk bands on the surface spin polarization in Sb. The present result strongly suggests that bulk-surface interband scattering should be properly taken into account to understand the Rashba surface states in group-V semimetals.