Validity of the relativistic phase shift model for the extrinsic spin Hall effect in dilute metal alloys

Recently, a generalized relativistic phase shift model was proposed (Fedorovet al 2013 Phys. Rev. B 88 085116) for the description of the skew-scattering contribution to the spin Hall effect caused by impurities. Here, we inspect this model by means of a systematic comparison with the results of first-principles calculations performed for several metallic host systems with different substitutional impurities. It is found that for its proper application, the differences between impurity and host phase shifts should be used as input parameters. Generally, the model provides good qualitative agreement with ab initio results for hosts with a free-electron-like Fermi surface and a relatively weak spin-orbit coupling, but fails otherwise.