A novel spin-spin coupling mechanism that occurs during the transport of spin-polarized minority electrons in semiconductors is described. Unlike the Coulomb spin drag, this coupling arises from the ambipolar electric field which is created by the differential movement of the photoelectrons and the photoholes. Like the Coulomb spin drag, it is a pure spin coupling that does not affect charge diffusion. Experimentally, the coupling is studied in $p^+$ GaAs using polarized microluminescence. The coupling manifests itself as an excitation power dependent reduction in the spin polarization at the excitation spot \textit{without} any change of the spatially averaged spin polarization.
Images of the steady-state luminescence of passivated GaAs self-standing films under excitation by a tightly-focussed laser are analyzed as a function of light excitation power. While unipolar diffusion of photoelectrons is dominant at very low light excitation power, an increased power results in a decrease of the diffusion constant near the center of the image due to the onset of ambipolar diffusion. The results are in agreement with a numerical solution of the diffusion equations and with a physical analysis of the luminescence intensity at the centre of the image, which permits the determi…
We report theoretical and experimental studies of ambipolar spin diffusion in a semiconductor. A circularly polarized laser pulse is used to excite spin-polarized carriers in a GaAs multiple quantum well sample at 80 K. Diffusion of electron and spin densities is simultaneously measured using a spatially and temporally resolved pump-probe technique. Two regimes of diffusion for spin-polarized electrons are observed. Initially, the rate of spin diffusion is similar to that of density diffusion and is controlled by the ambipolar diffusion coefficient. At later times, the spin diffusion slows dow…
We present a microscopic theory for transport of the spin polarized charge density wave with both electrons and holes in the $(111)$ GaAs quantum wells. We analytically show that, contradicting to the commonly accepted belief, the spin and charge motions are bound together only in the fully polarized system but can be separated in the case of low spin polarization or short spin lifetime even when the spatial profiles of spin density wave and charge density wave overlap with each other. We further show that, the Coulomb drag between electrons and holes can markedly enhance the hole spin diffusi…
We present measurements of Coulomb drag in an ambipolar GaAs/AlGaAs double quantum well structure that can be configured as both an electron-hole bilayer and a hole-hole bilayer, with an insulating barrier of only 10 nm between the two quantum wells. The Coulomb drag resistivity is a direct measure of the strength of the interlayer particle-particle interactions. We explore the strongly interacting regime of low carrier densities (2D interaction parameter $r_s$ up to 14). Our ambipolar device design allows comparison between the effects of the attractive electron-hole and repulsive hole-hole i…
We have used a polarized microluminescence technique to investigate photocarrier charge and spin transport in n-type depleted GaAs nanowires ($ \approx 10^{17}$ cm$^{-3}$ doping level). At 6K, a long-distance tail appears in the luminescence spatial profile, indicative of charge and spin transport, only limited by the length of the NW. This tail is independent on excitation power and temperature. Using a self-consistent calculation based on the drift-diffusion and Poisson equations as well as on photocarrier statistics (Van Roosbroeck model), it is found that this tail is due to photocarrier d…
We have fabricated AlGaAs/GaAs heterostructure devices in which the conduction channel can be populated with either electrons or holes simply by changing the polarity of a gate bias. The heterostructures are entirely undoped, and carriers are instead induced electrostatically. We use these devices to perform a direct comparison of the scattering mechanisms of two-dimensional (2D) electrons ($μ_\textrm{peak}=4\times10^6\textrm{cm}^2/\textrm{Vs}$) and holes ($μ_\textrm{peak}=0.8\times10^6\textrm{cm}^2/\textrm{Vs}$) in the same conduction channel with nominally identical disorder potentials. We f…
Low-temperature magnetotransport measurements are performed on GaAs/InSb core-shell nanowires. The nanowires were self-catalyzed grown by molecular beam epitaxy. The conductance measurements as a function of back-gate voltage show an ambipolar behavior comprising an insulating range in between the transition from the p-type to the n-type region. Simulations based on a self-consistent Schrödinger--Poisson solver revealed that the ambipolar characteristics originate from a Fermi level dependent occupation of hole and electron states within the approximately circular quantum well formed in the In…
We report the observation of tunneling anisotropic magnetoresistance effect (TAMR) in the epitaxial metal-semiconductor system Fe/GaAs/Au. The observed two-fold anisotropy of the resistance can be switched by reversing the bias voltage, suggesting that the effect originates from the interference of the spin-orbit coupling at the interfaces. Corresponding model calculations reproduce the experimental findings very well.
We derive analytically the change of exciton fine structure splitting (FSS) under the external stresses in the self-assembled InAs/GaAs quantum dots using the Bir-Pikus model. We find that the FSS change is mainly due to the strain induced valence bands mixing and valence-conduction band coupling. The exciton polarization angle under strain are determined by the argument of the electron-hole off-diagonal exchange integrals. The theory agrees well with the empirical pseudopotential calculations.
In p+ GaAs thin films, the effect of photoelectron degeneracy on spin transport is investigated theoretically and experimentally by imaging the spin polarization profile as a function of distance from a tightly-focussed light excitation spot. Under degeneracy of the electron gas (high concentration, low temperature), a dip at the center of the polarization profile appears with a polarization maximum at a distance of about $2 \; μm$ from the center. This counterintuitive result reveals that photoelectron diffusion depends on spin, as a direct consequence of the Pauli principle. This causes a co…
An ambipolar $n$-$p$ double quantum dot defined by potential variation along a semiconducting carbon-nanotube is considered. We focus on the (1e,1h) charge configuration with a single excess electron in the conduction band state confined in the $n$-type dot and a single missing electron in the valence band state of the $p$-dot for which lifting of the Pauli blockade of the current was observed in the electric-dipole spin resonance [E. A. Laird et al. Nat. Nanotech. 8 , 565 (2013)]. The dynamics of the system driven by periodic electric field is studied with the Floquet theory and the time-depe…
Polariton-mediated light-sound interaction is investigated through resonant Brillouin experiments in GaAs/AlAs multiple-quantum wells. Photoelastic coupling enhancement at exciton-polariton resonance reaches 105 at 30 K as compared to a typical bulk solid room temperature transparency value. When applied to GaAs based cavity optomechanical nanodevices, this result opens the path to huge displacement sensitivities and to novel ultrastrong-coupling cavity phenomena with optomechanical couplings g0 in the range of 100 THz.
Surface acoustic waves (SAWs) provide an efficient dynamical coupling between strain and magnetization in micro/nano-metric devices. Using a hybrid device composed of a piezoelectric, GaAs, and a ferromagnetic Heusler alloy thin film, Fe$_3$Si, we are able to quantify the amplitude of magnetoacoustic waves generated with SAWs via magnetic imaging in an X-ray photoelectron microscope. The cubic anisotropy of the sample together with a low damping coefficient allows for the observation of resonant and non-resonant magnetoelastic coupling. Additionally, via micromagnetic simulation, we verify the…
An appropriate combination of the scattering theory and the transfer matrix formalism, for the solution of a (4 x 4) Kohn-Luttinger model, allow us to study the multichannel-multiband transmission process of heavy and light holes through a (GaAs/AlAs) superlattice. Appealing effects and interesting channel coupling phenomena, mediated by quasi-bond states, are clearly foreseen.
A spin relaxation mechanism is proposed based on a second-order spin-flip intersubband spin-orbit coupling together with the spin-conserving scattering. The corresponding spin relaxation time is calculated via the Fermi golden rule. It is shown that this mechanism is important in symmetric GaAs (110) quantum wells with high impurity density. The dependences of the spin relaxation time on electron density, temperature and well width are studied with the underlying physics analyzed.
Opto-spintronics is an emerging field where ultra-thin magnetic-semiconductors having high spin-valley coupling play an important role. Here, we demonstrate substitutional vanadium (V) doping in MoS$_2$ lattice in different extent, leading to the coexistence of photoluminescence (PL), valleypolarization (~32%), and valley splitting (~28 meV shift in PL with helicity $σ^+$ and $σ^-$ of light excitation). A large V doping causes semiconductor to metal transition in MoS$_2$ but with medium level causing the existence of photoluminescence with high spin polarization. The ambipolar nature of medium…
Coupled hybrid nanostructures are demonstrated using the combination of lithographically patterned graphene on top of a two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) buried in a GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructure. The graphene forms Schottky barriers at the surface of the heterostructure and therefore allows tuning the electronic density of the 2DEG. Conversely, the 2DEG potential can tune the graphene Fermi energy. Graphene-defined quantum point contacts in the 2DEG show half-plateaus of quantized conductance in finite bias spectroscopy and display the 0.7 anomaly for a large range of densities in the constri…
Simultaneous study of acoustic and optic phonon scattering of electrons and holes in undoped $\mathrm{GaAs}$/$\mathrm{Al_{x} Ga_{1-x} As}$ heterostructures
本研究利用非掺杂 GaAs/AlGaAs 异质结构,通过电阻率温度依赖性测量,在 1.6-92.5K 范围内同步研究了二维电子和空穴的声学与光学声子散射,提取了耦合常数和 LO 激活能,验证了该方法的有效性。
We report strong heavy hole-light mixing in GaAs quantum dots grown by droplet epitaxy. Using the neutral and charged exciton emission as a monitor we observe the direct consequence of quantum dot symmetry reduction in this strain free system. By fitting the polar diagram of the emission with simple analytical expressions obtained from k$\cdot$p theory we are able to extract the mixing that arises from the heavy-light hole coupling due to the geometrical asymmetry of the quantum dot.
We investigate the spin relaxation due to the random Rashba spin-orbit coupling in symmetric GaAs (110) quantum wells from the fully microscopic kinetic spin Bloch equation approach. All relevant scatterings, such as the electron-impurity, electron--longitudinal-optical-phonon, electron--acoustic-phonon, as well as electron-electron Coulomb scatterings are explicitly included. It is shown that our calculation reproduces the experimental data by Müller {\em et al.} [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 101}, 206601 (2008)] for a reasonable choice of parameter values. We also predict that the temperature depen…
We investigate the anisotropy of the optical properties of thin Fe films on GaAs(001) from first-principles calculations. Both intrinsic and magnetization-induced anisotropy are covered by studying the system in the presence of spin-orbit coupling and external magnetic fields. We use the linearized augmented plane wave method, as implemented in the WIEN2k density functional theory code, to show that the $C_{2v}$ symmetric anisotropy of the spin-orbit coupling fields at the Fe/GaAs(001) interface manifests itself in the corresponding anisotropy of the optical conductivity and the polar magneto-…
The level splittings induced by a horizontal magnetic field in a parabolic two-dimensional quantum dot with spin-orbit interaction are obtained. Characteristic features induced by the spin-orbit coupling are the appearance of zero-field gaps as well as energy splittings that depend on the electronic state and the orientation of the magnetic field in the quantum-dot plane. It is suggested that these quantum-dot properties could be used to determine the Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit intensities
Time-resolved optical measurements of electron-spin dynamics in a (110) GaAs quantum well are used to study the consequences of a strongly anisotropic electron g-tensor, and the origin of previously discovered all-optical nuclear magnetic resonance. All components of the g-tensor are measured, and a strong anisotropy even along the in-plane directions is found. The amplitudes of the spin signal allow the study of the spatial directions of the injected spin and its precession axis. Surprisingly efficient dynamic nuclear polarization in a geometry where the electron spins are injected almost tra…
We study decoherence of nuclear spins in a nanoscale GaAs device based on resistively detected nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). We demonstrate how the spin echo technique can be modified for our system, and this is compared to the damping of Rabi-type coherent oscillations. By selectively decoupling nuclear-nuclear and electron-nuclear spin, we determine decoherence rates due to individual mechanisms, namely, direct or indirect dipole coupling between different or like nuclides and electron-nuclear spin coupling. The data reveal that the indirect dipole coupling between Ga and As mediated by …
We report experiments on epitaxially grown Fe/GaAs/Au tunnel junctions demonstrating that the tunneling anisotropic magnetoresistance (TAMR) effect can be controlled by a magnetic field. Theoretical modelling shows that the interplay of the orbital effects of a magnetic field and the Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling in the GaAs barrier leads to an independent contribution to the TAMR effect with uniaxial symmetry, whereas the Bychkov-Rashba spin-orbit coupling does not play a role. The effect is intrinsic to barriers with bulk inversion asymmetry.
We show that when following a simple cavity design metric, a quantum well exciton-microcavity photon coupling constant can be larger than the exciton binding energy in GaAs based optical microcavities. Such a very strong coupling significantly reduces the relative electron-hole motion and makes the polaritons robust against phonon collisions. The corresponding polariton dissociation and saturation boundaries on the phase diagram are much improved, and our calculations suggest the possibility of constructing a room temperature, high power exciton-polariton laser without resorting to wide bandga…
The central-spin problem, in which an electron spin interacts with a nuclear spin bath, is a widely studied model of quantum decoherence. Dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP) occurs in central spin systems when electronic angular momentum is transferred to nuclear spins and is exploited in spin-based quantum information processing for coherent electron and nuclear spin control. However, the mechanisms limiting DNP remain only partially understood. Here, we show that spin-orbit coupling quenches DNP in a GaAs double quantum dot, even though spin-orbit coupling in GaAs is weak. Using Landau-Zener …
We report on the first measurements of the drag effect between coupled 2D-hole gases. We investigate the coupling by changing the carrier densities in the quantum wells, the widths of the barriers between the gases and the perpendicular magnetic field. From the data we are able to attribute the frictional drag to phonon coupling, because the non-parabolicity allows to tune the Fermi wavevector and the Fermi velocity separately and, thereby, to distinguish between phonon- and plasmon-dominated coupling.
Hole spin relaxation in $p$-type (111) GaAs quantum wells is investigated in the case with only the lowest hole subband, which is heavy-hole like in (111) GaAs/AlAs and light-hole like in (111) GaAs/InP quantum wells, being relevant. The subband Löwdin perturbation method is applied to obtain the effective Hamiltonian including the Dresselhaus and Rashba spin-orbit couplings. Under a proper gate voltage, the total in-plane effective magnetic field in (111) GaAs/AlAs quantum wells can be strongly suppressed in the whole momentum space, while the one in (111) GaAs/InP quantum wells can be suppre…
We investigated the spin dynamics of two-dimensional electrons in (001) GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructure using the time resolved Kerr rotation technique under a transverse magnetic field. The in-plane spin lifetime is found to be anisotropic below 150k due to the interference of Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling and D'yakonov-Perel' spin relaxation. The ratio of in-plane spin lifetimes is measured directly as a function of temperature and pump power, showing that the electron density in 2DEG channel strongly affects the Rashba spin-orbit coupling.
The effect of an in-plane magnetic field on resonant tunneling in a symmetric GaAs/AlYGa1-YAs triple-barrier resonant tunneling TBRT structure is presented. The splitting of the resonant lines (and hence the coupling energy vs. magnetic induction) for the ground and the first excited resonant doublet shifts up in energy by increasing the magnetic induction. Each of branches in the resonant dispersion relations shows a parabolic behavior with the location of the cyclotron orbit center. It is expected that, at very high fields, the interaction with confined phonons be enhanced, due to phonon cou…
In self assembled III-V semiconductor quantum dots, valence holes have longer spin coherence times than the conduction electrons, due to their weaker coupling to nuclear spin bath fluctuations. Prolonging hole spin stability relies on a better understanding of the hole to nuclear spin hyperfine coupling which we address both in experiment and theory in the symmetric (111) GaAs/AlGaAs droplet dots. In magnetic fields applied along the growth axis, we create a strong nuclear spin polarization detected through the positively charged trion X$^+$ Zeeman and Overhauser splittings. The observation of…
Chip-based cavity optomechanical systems are being considered for applications in sensing, metrology, and quantum information science. Critical to their development is an understanding of how the optical and mechanical modes interact, quantified by the coupling rate $g_{0}$. Here, we develop GaAs optomechanical resonators and investigate the moving dielectric boundary and photoelastic contributions to $g_{0}$. First, we consider coupling between the fundamental radial breathing mechanical mode and a 1550 nm band optical whispering gallery mode in microdisks. For decreasing disk radius from $R=…
We have fabricated and characterized the Landau level spin diode in GaAs two dimensional hole system. We used the hole Landau level spin diode to probe the hyperfine coupling between the hole and nuclear spins and found no detectable net nuclear polarization, indicating that hole-nuclear spin flip-flop processes are suppressed by at least three orders of magnitude compared to GaAs electron systems.
We report on linewidth analysis of optical transitions in InAs/GaAs coupled quantum dots as a function of bias voltage, temperature, and tunnel coupling strength. A significant line broadening up to 100 $μ$eV is observed at hole tunneling resonances where the coherent tunnel coupling between spatially direct and indirect exciton states is maximized, corresponding to a phonon-assisted transition rate of 150 ns${}^{-1}$ at 20 K. With increasing temperature, the linewidth shows broadening characteristic of single-phonon transitions. The linewidth as a function of tunnel coupling strength tracks t…
We report on magnetotransport measurements in two MBE-grown GaAs/AlGaAs superlattices formed by wide and narrow quantum wells and thin Si-doped barriers subject to tilted magnetic fields. It has been shown that illumination of the strongly coupled superlattice with narrow wells leads to reduction of its dimensionality from the 3D to 2D. The illumination-induced transition is revealed by remarkable change of magnetoresistance curves as compared to those measured before illumination. The experimental data along with tight-binding model calculations indicate that the illumination not only enhance…
We develop a theory of extrinsic spin currents in semiconductors, resulting from spin-orbit coupling at charged scatterers, which leads to skew scattering and side jump contributions to the spin Hall conductance. Applying the theory to bulk n-GaAs, without any free parameters, we find spin currents that are in reasonable agreement with recent experiments by Kato et al. [Science 306, 1910 (2004)].
Phonon-assisted transport and hole-phonon coupling in GaAs double quantum dots
University of Science and Technology of China(中国科学技术大学);CAS Center for Excellence and Synergetic Innovation Center in Quantum Information and Quantum Physics, University of Science and Technology of China(中国科学技术大学量子信息与量子物理前沿协同创新中心);Hefei National Laboratory, University of Science and Technology of China(中国科学技术大学合肥国家实验室)
We study intrinsic spin Hall effect in p-type GaAs quantum well structure described by Luttinger Hamiltonian and a Rashba spin-orbit coupling arising from the structural inversion symmetry breaking. The Rashba term induces an energy level crossing in the lowest heavy hole subband, which gives rise to a resonant spin Hall conductance. The resonance may be used to identify the intrinsic spin Hall effect in experiments.
We report on coherent emission of the neutral exciton state in a single semiconductor self-assembled InAs/GaAs quantum dot embedded in a one-dimensional waveguide, under resonant picosecond pulsed excita- tion. Direct measurements of the radiative lifetime and coherence time are performed as a function of excitation power and temperature. The characteristic damping of Rabi oscillations which is observed, is attributed to an excitation-induced dephasing due to a resonant coupling between the emitter and the acoustic phonon bath of the matrix. Other sources responsible for the decrease of the co…
Vacuum Rabi splitting is observed in a coupled qubit-resonator system consisting of a GaAs double quantum dot and a coplanar waveguide resonator. Derived values of the qubit-resonator coupling strength and the decoherence rate indicate strong coupling, which assures distinct vacuum Rabi oscillation in the system. The amplitude of decoherence is reasonably interpreted in terms of the coupling of electrons to piezoelectric acoustic phonons in GaAs.
The spin of a single electron in an electrically defined quantum dot in a 2DEG can be manipulated by moving the quantum dot adiabatically in a closed loop in the 2D plane under the influence of applied gate potentials. In this paper we present analytical expressions and numerical simulations for the spin-flip probabilities during the adiabatic evolution in the presence of the Rashba and Dresselhaus linear spin-orbit interactions. We use the Feynman disentanglement technique to determine the non-Abelian Berry phase and we find exact analytical expressions for three special cases: (i) the pure R…
We investigate the Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit (SO) couplings in GaAs quantum wells in the range of well widths $w$ allowing for a transition of the electron occupancy from one to two subbands. By performing a detailed Poisson-Schrödinger self-consistent calculation, we determine all the intra- and inter-subband Rashba ($α_1$, $α_2$, $η$) and Dresselhaus ($β_1$, $β_2$, $Γ$) coupling strengths. For relatively narrow wells with only one subband occupied, our results are consistent with the data of Koralek \emph{et al.} [Nature \bfs{48}, 610 (2009)], i.e., the Rashba coupling $α_1$ is essen…
Spin relaxation of a single electron in a weakly coupled double quantum dot is calculated numerically. The phonon assisted spin flip is allowed by the presence of the linear and cubic spin-orbit couplings and nuclear spins. The rate is calculated as a function of the interdot coupling, the magnetic field strength and orientation, and the dot bias. In an in-plane magnetic field, the rate is strongly anisotropic with respect to the magnetic field orientation, due to the anisotropy of the spin-orbit interactions. The nuclear spin influence is negligible. In an out-of-plane field, the nuclear spin…
Understanding (and controlling) hyperfine interactions in semiconductor nanostructures is important for fundamental studies of material properties as well as for quantum information processing with electron, hole, and nuclear-spin states. Through a combination of first-principles density-functional theory (DFT) and $\mathbf{k}\cdot\mathbf{p}$ theory, we have calculated hyperfine tensors for electrons and holes in GaAs and crystalline silicon. Accounting for relativistic effects near the nuclear core, we find contact hyperfine interactions for electrons in GaAs that are consistent with Knight-s…
We report the observation of an anomalous conductance plateau near G = 0.5 G0 (G0 = 2e2/h) in asymmetrically biased AlGaAs/GaAs quantum point contacts (QPCs), with in-plane side gates in the presence of lateral spin-orbit coupling. This is a signature of spin polarization in the narrow portion of the QPC. The appearance and evolution of the conductance anomaly has been studied at T=4.2K as a function of the potential asymmetry between the side gates. The observation of spontaneous spin polarization in a side-gated GaAs QPC could eventually lead to the realization of an all-electric spin-valve …
We utilize electron counting techniques to distinguish a spin conserving fast tunneling process and a slower process involving spin flips in AlGaAs/GaAs-based double quantum dots. By studying the dependence of the rates on the interdot tunnel coupling of the two dots, we find that as many as 4% of the tunneling events occur with a spin flip related to spin-orbit coupling in GaAs. Our measurement has a fidelity of 99 % in terms of resolving whether a tunneling event occurred with a spin flip or not.
We present spin-resolved measurements of the local density of states in Si doped GaAs. Both spin components exhibit strong mesoscopic fluctuations. In the magnetic quantum limit, the main features of the spin-up and spin-down components of the local density of states are found to be identical apart from Zeeman splitting. Based on this observation, we introduce a mesoscopic method to measure the $g$-factor in a material where macroscopic methods are severely restricted by disorder. Differences between the spin-up and spin-down components are discussed in terms of spin relaxation due to spin-orb…
We analyze the effects of spin-orbit coupling on fluctuations of the conductance of a quantum dot fabricated in a GaAs heterostructure. We argue that spin-orbit effects may become important in the presence of a large parallel magnetic field B_{||}, even if they are negligble for B_{||}=0. This should be manifest in the level repulsion of a closed dot, and in reduced conductance fluctuations in dots with a small number of open channels in each lead, for large B_{||}. Our picture is consistent with the experimental observations of Folk et al.
Transient four-wave mixing studies of bulk GaAs under conditions of broad bandwidth excitation of primarily interband transitions have enabled four-particle correlations tied to degenerate (exciton-exciton) and nondegenerate (exciton-carrier) interactions to be studied. Real two-dimensional Fourier-transform spectroscopy (2DFTS) spectra reveal a complex response at the heavy-hole exciton emission energy that varies with the absorption energy, ranging from dispersive on the diagonal, through absorptive for low-energy interband transitions to dispersive with the opposite sign for interband trans…
We study the anisotropic orbital effect in the electric field tunability of the phonon induced spin-flip rate in quantum dots (QDs). Our study shows that anisotropic gate potential enhances the spin-flip rate and reduces the level crossing point to a lower quantum dot radius due to the suppression of the Land$\acute{e}$ g-factor towards bulk crystal. In the range of $10^4-10^6$ V/cm, the electric field tunability of the phonon induced spin-flip rate can be manipulated through strong Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling. These results might assist the development of a spin based solid state quantum …
Temperature and carrier density dependent spin dynamics for GaAs/AlGaAs quantum wells (QWs) with different structural symmetry has been studied by using time-resolved Kerr rotation technique. The spin relaxation time is measured to be much longer for the symmetrically-designed GaAs quantum well comparing with the asymmetrical one, indicating the strong influence of Rashba spin-orbit coupling on spin relaxation. D'yakonov-Perel' (DP) mechanism has been revealed to be the dominant contribution for spin relaxation in GaAs/AlGaAs QWs. The spin relaxation time exhibits non-monotonic dependent behav…
We use time-resolved detection of the Hanle effect and polarized photoluminescence with dark intervals to investigate the buildup and decay of the spin polarization of nuclei interacting with donor-bound electrons in $n$-doped GaAs. Strong hyperfine coupling defines the millisecond timescale of the spin dynamics of these nuclei, as distinct from the nuclei far from impurity centers, characterized by a thousand times longer spin-relaxation time. The dynamics of spin polarization and relaxation attributed to the nuclei inside the donor orbit is observed on the time scale from 200 to 425 ms.
Understanding and control of the spin relaxation time $T_1$ is among the key challenges for spin based qubits. A larger $T_1$ is generally favored, setting the fundamental upper limit to the qubit coherence and spin readout fidelity. In GaAs quantum dots at low temperatures and high in-plane magnetic fields $B$, the spin relaxation relies on phonon emission and spin-orbit coupling. The characteristic dependence $T_1 \propto B^{-5}$ and pronounced $B$-field anisotropy were already confirmed experimentally. However, it has also been predicted 15 years ago that at low enough fields, the spin-orbi…
We present a systematic investigation of two-photon excitation processes in a GaAs-based microcavity in the strong-coupling regime. We observe second harmonic generation resonant to the upper and lower polariton level, which exhibits a strong dependence on the photonic fraction of the corresponding polariton. In addition we have performed two-photon excitation spectroscopy to identify $2p$ exciton states which are crucial for the operation as a terahertz lasing device, which was suggested recently [A. V. Kavokin et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. \textbf{108}, 197401 (2012)]. However, no distinct signat…