We introduce a variant to the diffusion Monte Carlo algorithm that can be employed to study the effects of the Rashba interaction in many-electron systems. Because of the spin-orbit nature of Rashba interaction a standard algorithm cannot be applied and therefore a specific imaginary time spin-dependent propagator has been developed and implemented following previous work developed in the framework of nuclear physics. We computed the ground-state energy of the two-dimensional electron gas at different densities for several values of the Rashba interaction strength as a function of “Rashba spin states” polarization. Comparison is given with analytically known Hartree-Fock results and for the system in absence of Coulomb interaction.

• Received 8 May 2009

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.80.125306