  Spin currents that flow perpendicular to the electric field direction are
generic in metals and doped semiconductors with spin-orbit coupling. It has
recently been argued that the spin Hall conductivity can be dominated by an
intrinsic contribution which follows from Bloch state distortion in the
presence of an electric field. Here we report on an numerical demonstration of
the robustness of this effect in the presence of disorder scattering for the
case of a two-dimensional electron-gas with Rashba spin-orbit interactions
(R2DES).
