  We study a ballistic spin field-effect transistor (SFET) with special
attention to the issue of multi-channel effects. The conductance modulation of
the SFET as a function of the Rashba spin-orbit coupling strength is
numerically examined for the number of channels ranging from a few to close to
100. Even with the ideal spin injector and collector, the conductance
modulation ratio, defined as the ratio between the maximum and minimum
conductances, decays rapidly and approaches one with the increase of the
channel number. It turns out that the decay is considerably faster when the
Rashba spin-orbit coupling is larger. Effects of the electronic coherence are
also examined in the multi-channel regime and it is found that the coherent
Fabry-Perot-like interference in the multi-channel regime gives rise to a
nested peak structure. For a nonideal spin injector/collector structure, which
consists of a conventional metallic ferromagnet-thin insulator-2DEG
heterostructure, the Rashba-coupling-induced conductance modulation is strongly
affected by large resonance peaks that arise from the electron confinement
effect of the insulators. Finally scattering effects are briefly addressed and
it is found that in the weakly diffusive regime, the positions of the resonance
peaks fluctuate, making the conductance modulation signal sample-dependent.
