We investigate the magnetic behavior of nuclear spins embedded in a 2D interacting electron gas using a Kondo lattice model description. We derive an effective magnetic Hamiltonian for the nuclear spins which is of the RKKY type and where the interactions between the nuclear spins are strongly modified by the electron-electron interactions. We show that the nuclear magnetic ordering at finite temperature relies on the (anomalous) behavior of the 2D static electron spin susceptibility, and thus provides a connection between low-dimensional magnetism and non-analyticities in interacting 2D electron systems. Using various perturbative and non-perturbative approximation schemes in order to establish the general shape of the electron spin susceptibility as function of its wave vector, we show that the nuclear spins locally order ferromagnetically, and that this ordering can become global in certain regimes of interest. We demonstrate that the associated Curie temperature for the nuclear system increases with the electron-electron interactions up to the millikelvin range.
Nuclear magnetism in n-doped semiconductors with positive hyperfine constant is revisited. Two kinds of nuclear magnetic ordering can be induced by resident electrons in a deeply cooled nuclear spin system. At positive nuclear spin temperature below a critical value, randomly oriented nuclear spin polarons similar to that predicted by I. Merkulov [I. Merkulov, Physics of the Solid State 40, 930 (1998)] should emerge. These polarons are oriented randomly and within each polaron nuclear and electron spins are aligned antiferromagnetically. At negative nuclear spin temperature below a critical va…
Electrons in a two-dimensional semiconducting heterostructure interact with nuclear spins via the hyperfine interaction. Using a a Kondo lattice formulation of the electron-nuclear spin interaction, we show that the nuclear spin system within an interacting two-dimensional electron gas undergoes a ferromagnetic phase transition at finite temperatures. We find that electron-electron interactions and non-Fermi liquid behavior substantially enhance the nuclear spin Curie temperature into the $mK$ range with decreasing electron density.
We study the temperature dependence of the electrical conductance of a clean strongly interacting quantum wire in the presence of a helical nuclear spin order. The nuclear spin helix opens a temperature-dependent partial gap in the electron spectrum. Using a bosonization framework we describe the gapped electron modes by sine-Gordon-like kinks. We predict an internal resistivity caused by an Ohmic-like friction these kinks experience via interacting with gapless excitations. As a result, the conductance rises from $G=e^2/h$ at temperatures below the critical temperature when nuclear spins are …
The interaction between localized magnetic moments and the electrons of a one-dimensional conductor can lead to an ordered phase in which the magnetic moments and the electrons are tightly bound to each other. We show here that this occurs when a lattice of nuclear spins is embedded in a Luttinger liquid. Experimentally available examples of such a system are single wall carbon nanotubes grown entirely from 13C and GaAs-based quantum wires. In these systems the hyperfine interaction between the nuclear spin and the conduction electron spin is very weak, yet it triggers a strong feedback reacti…
Electron spin qubit coherence in quantum dots is ultimately limited by random nuclear spin bath fluctuations. Here we aim to eliminate this randomness by making spin bath evolution deterministic. We introduce spin bath control sequences, which systematically combine Hahn and solid echoes to suppress inhomogeneous broadening and nuclear-nuclear interactions. Experiments on self-assembled quantum dots show a five-fold increase in nuclear spin coherence. Numerical simulations show that these sequences can be used to suppress decoherence via qubit-qubit interaction in point defect and dopant spin …
We propose an RKKY-type interaction that is mediated by a spin liquid. If a spin liquid ground state exists such an interaction could leave a fingerprint by ordering underlying localized moments such as nuclear spins. This interaction has a unique phenomenology that is distinct from the RKKY interaction found in fermionic systems; most notably the lack of a Fermi surface and absence of the requirement for itinerant electrons, since most spin liquids are insulators. As a working example we investigate the two-dimensional spin-1/2 kagome antiferromagnet (KAFM), although the treatment remains gen…
The hyperfine interaction between the electron spin and the nuclear spins is one of the main sources of decoherence for spin qubits when the nuclear spins are disordered. An ordering of the latter largely suppresses this source of decoherence. Here we show that such an ordering can occur through a thermodynamic phase transition in two-dimensional (2D) Kondo-lattice type systems. We specifically focus on nuclear spins embedded in a 2D electron gas. The nuclear spins interact with each other through the RKKY interaction, which is carried by the electron gas. We show that a nuclear magnetic order…
A microscopic theory of spin fluctuations of localized electrons interacting with optically cooled nuclear spin bath has been developed. Since nuclear spin temperature may stay low enough for macroscopically long time, the nuclear spin system becomes very sensitive to an external magnetic field. This strongly affects electron spin noise spectrum. It has been shown that in the case of weak fields/relatively high nuclear spin temperature, a small degree of nuclear spin polarization affect the electron spin fluctuations in the same way as an additional external magnetic field. By contrast, the hi…
Enhancement of the electron spin polarization in a correlated two-layer two-dimensional electron system at a total Landau level filling factor of one is reported. Using resistively detected nuclear magnetic resonance, we demonstrate that the electron spin polarization of two closely-spaced two-dimensional electron systems becomes maximized when inter-layer Coulomb correlations establish spontaneous isospin ferromagnetic order. This correlation-driven polarization dominates over the spin polarizations of competing single-layer fractional Quantum Hall states under electron density imbalances.
We report on theoretical and experimental study of the spin polarization recovery and Hanle effect for the charge carriers interacting with the fluctuating nuclear spins in the semiconductor structures. We start the theoretical description from the simplest model of static and isotropic nuclear spin fluctuations. Then we describe the modification of the polarization recovery and Hanle curves due to the anisotropy of the hyperfine interaction, finite nuclear spin correlation time, and the strong pulsed spin excitation. For the latter case, we describe the resonance spin amplification effect in …
Resonant cooling of different nuclear isotopes manifested in optically-induced nuclear magnetic resonances (NMR) is observed in n-doped CdTe/(Cd,Mg)Te and ZnSe/(Zn,Mg)Se quantum wells and for donor-bound electrons in ZnSe:F and GaAs epilayers. By time-resolved Kerr rotation used in the regime of resonant spin amplification we can expand the range of magnetic fields where the effect can be observed up to nuclear Larmor frequencies of 170 kHz. The mechanism of the resonant cooling of the nuclear spin system is analyzed theoretically. The developed approach allows us to model the resonant spin am…
Effects of short-range electronic interactions in a three-dimensional line-node semimetal that supports linearly dispersing quasiparticles around an isolated loop in the Brillouin zone are discussed. Due to vanishing density of states ($\varrho(E) \sim |E|$) various orderings in the bulk of the system, such as the antiferromagnet and charge-density-wave, set in for sufficiently strong onsite ($U$) and nearest-neighbor ($V$) repulsions, respectively. While onset of these two orderings from the semimetallic phase takes place through continuous quantum phase transitions, a first-order transition …
We present a quantum solution to the electron spin decoherence by a nuclear pair-correlation method for the electron-nuclear spin dynamics under a strong magnetic field and a temperature high for the nuclear spins but low for the electron. The theory incorporates the hyperfine interaction, the intrinsic (both direct and indirect) nuclear interactions, and the extrinsic nuclear coupling mediated by the hyperfine interaction with the single electron in question. The last is shown to be important in free-induction decay (FID) of the single electron spin coherence. The spin echo eliminates the hyp…
A physically transparent and mathematically simple semiclassical model is employed to examine dynamics in the central-spin problem. The results reproduce a number of previous findings obtained by various quantum approaches and, at the same time, provide information on the electron spin dynamics and Berry's phase effects over a wider range of experimentally relevant parameters than available previously. This development is relevant to dynamics of bound magnetic polarons and spin dephasing of an electron trapped by an impurity or a quantum dot, and coupled by a contact interaction to neighboring…
Nuclear spin-1/2 lattices where each spin has a small effective number of interacting neighbors represent a particular challenge for first-principles calculations of free induction decays (FIDs) observed by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). The challenge originates from the fact that these lattices are far from the limit where classical spin simulations perform well. Here we use the recently developed method of hybrid quantum-classical simulations to compute nuclear FIDs for $^{29}$Si-enriched silicon and fluorapatite. In these solids, small effective number of interacting neighbors is either …
Few examples of magnetic systems displaying a transition to pure dipolar magnetic order are known to date, and single-molecule magnets can provide an interesting example. The molecular cluster spins and thus their dipolar interaction energy can be quite high, leading to reasonably accessible ordering temperatures, provided the crystal field anisotropy is sufficiently small. This condition can be met for molecular clusters of sufficiently high symmetry, as for the Mn6 compound studied here. Magnetic specific heat and susceptibility experiments show a transition to ferromagnetic dipolar order at…
The theory of Raman scattering in half-metals by optical phonons interacting with conduction electrons is developed. We evaluate the effect of electron-phonon interactions at ferromagnetic ordering in terms of the Boltzmann equation for carriers. The chemical potential is found to decrease with temperature decreasing. Both the linewidth and frequency shift exhibit a dependence on temperature.
The ability to discriminate between simultaneously occurring noise sources in the local environment of semiconductor InGaAs quantum dots, such as electric and magnetic field fluctuations, is key to understanding their respective dynamics and their effect on quantum dot coherence properties. We present a discriminatory approach to all-optical sensing based on two-color resonance fluorescence of a quantum dot charged with a single electron. Our measurements show that local magnetic field fluctuations due to nuclear spins in the absence of an external magnetic field are described by two correlati…
We theoretically study the randomly positioned two-dimensional system of interacting magnetic dipoles representing the monolayer arrays of single-domain particles. It is showed the onset of the dipolar in-plane superferromagnetic ordering of Ising spins at the surface concentrations of nanoparticles above 0.24. The critical concentration of particles with random easy axis arrangement at zero temperature is 0.65. It is demonstrated that the ensemble with Ising arrangement of spins is ordered at high temperatures close to a particle Curie point.
We consider pure dephasing of Bell states of electron spin qubits interacting with a sparse bath of nuclear spins. Using the newly developed two-qubit generalization of cluster correlation expansion method, we calculate the spin echo decay of $|Ψ\rangle$ and $|Φ\rangle$ states for various interqubit distances. Comparing the results with calculations in which dephasing of each qubit is treated independently, we identify signatures of influence of common part of the bath on the two qubits. At large interqubit distances, this common part consists of many nuclei weakly coupled to both qubits, so t…
Linearly polarized light tuned slightly below the optical transition of the negatively charged exciton (trion) in a single quantum dot causes the spontaneous nuclear spin polarization (self-polarization) at a level close to 100%. The effective magnetic field of spin-polarized nuclei brings the optical transition energy into resonance with photon energy. The resonantly enhanced Overhauser effect sustains the stability of the nuclear self-polarization even in the absence of spin polarization of the quantum dot electron. As a result the optically selected single quantum dot represents a tiny magn…
The dynamic polarization of nuclear spins interacting with resident electrons under resonant excitation of trions is studied in a nominally undoped GaAs/(Al,Ga)As quantum well. Unlike in common time-resolved pump-probe techniques, we used a single beam approach where the excitation light is modulated between the circular and linear polarization states. The time-integrated intensity of the excitation laser reflected from the sample surface, proportional to the optical generation rate and changes due to the pumping of the resident electrons, is detected. Polarized electrons on the other hand tra…
We investigate nuclear spin effects in a two-dimensional electron gas in the quantum Hall regime modeled by a weakly coupled array of interacting quantum wires. We show that the presence of hyperfine interaction between electron and nuclear spins in such wires can induce a phase transition, ordering electrons and nuclear spins into a helix in each wire. Electron-electron interaction effects, pronounced within the one-dimensional stripes, boost the transition temperature up to tens to hundreds of millikelvins in GaAs. We predict specific experimental signatures of the existence of nuclear spin …
In quantum wires, the hyperfine coupling between conduction electrons and nuclear spins can lead to a (partial) ordering of both of them at low temperatures. By an interaction-enhanced mechanism, the nuclear spin order, caused by RKKY exchange, acts back onto the electrons and gaps out part of their spectrum. In wires with two subbands characterized by distinct Fermi momenta kF1 and kF2, the nuclear spins form a superposition of two helices with pitches π/kF1 and π/kF2, thus exhibiting a beating pattern. This order results in a reduction of the electronic conductance in two steps upon lowering…
The role of dipolar interactions and anisotropy are important to obtain, otherwise forbidden, ferromagnetic ordering at finite temperature for ions arranged in two-dimensional (2D) arrays (monolayers). Here we demonstrate that conventional low temperature magnetometry and polarized neutron scattering measurements can be performed to study ferromagnetic ordering of in-plane spins in 2D systems using a multilayer stack of non-interacting monolayers of gadolinium ions. The spontaneous magnetization is absent in the heterogenous magnetic phase observed here and the saturation value of the net magn…
We suggest a new spin orientation mechanism for localized electrons: $dynamic~electron~spin~polarization~provided~by~nuclear~spin~fluctuations$. The angular momentum for the electrons is gained from the nuclear spin system via the hyperfine interaction in a weak magnetic field. For this the sample is illuminated by an unpolarized light, which directly polarizes neither the electrons nor the nuclei. We predict, that for the electrons bound in localized excitons 100% spin polarization can be reached in longitudinal magnetic fields of a few millitesla. The proof of principle experiment is perform…
We report the first example of a transition to long-range magnetic order in a purely dipolarly interacting molecular magnet. For the magnetic cluster compound Mn6O4Br4(Et2dbm)6, the anisotropy experienced by the total spin S=12 of each cluster is so small that spin-lattice relaxation remains fast down to the lowest temperatures, thus enabling dipolar order to occur within experimental times at Tc = 0.16 K. In high magnetic fields, the relaxation rate becomes drastically reduced and the interplay between nuclear- and electron-spin lattice relaxation is revealed.
The late-stage ordering of interacting magnetic skyrmions is studied numerically through extensive Langevin molecular dynamics simulations. Defining skyrmion displacements that change the connectivity of cells obtained in a Voronoi tesselation as events, we investigate event histograms as a function of the time elapsed since preparing the system as well as the histograms of consecutive events as a function of the time separating these two events. These histograms, which provide unique insights into the transient properties during the ordering process of skyrmion matter, show a characteristic b…
We study the dynamics of entanglement of two electron spins in two quantum dots, in which each electron is interacting with its nuclear spin environment. Focusing on the case of uncoupled dots, and starting from either Bell or Werner states of two qubits, we calculate the decay of entanglement due to the hyperfine interaction with the nuclei. We mostly focus on the regime of magnetic fields in which the bath-induced electron spin flips play a role, for example their presence leads to the appearance of entanglement sudden death at finite time for two qubits initialized in a Bell state. For thes…
