We study the effect of a noisy environment on spin and charge transport in ballistic quantum wires with spin-orbit coupling (Rashba coupling). We find that the wire then acts as a ``dephasing diode'', inducing very different dephasing of the spins of right and left movers. We also show how Berry phase (geometric phase) in a curved wire can induce such asymmetric dephasing, in addition to purely geometric dephasing. We propose ways to measure these effects through spin detectors, spin-echo techniques, and Aharanov-Bohm interferometry.
Categories: cond-mat.mes-hall cond-mat.dis-nn quant-ph