9 research outputs found
Suppressed spin dephasing for 2D and bulk electrons in GaAs wires due to engineered cancellation of spin-orbit interaction terms
We report a study of suppressed spin dephasing for quasi-one-dimensional
electron ensembles in wires etched into a GaAs/AlGaAs heterojunction system.
Time-resolved Kerr-rotation measurements show a suppression that is most
pronounced for wires along the [110] crystal direction. This is the fingerprint
of a suppression that is enhanced due to a strong anisotropy in spin-orbit
fields that can occur when the Rashba and Dresselhaus contributions are
engineered to cancel each other. A surprising observation is that this
mechanisms for suppressing spin dephasing is not only effective for electrons
in the heterojunction quantum well, but also for electrons in a deeper bulk
layer.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure
Optical probing of spin dynamics of two-dimensional and bulk electrons in a GaAs/AlGaAs heterojunction system
We present time-resolved Kerr rotation measurements of electron spin dynamics
in a GaAs/AlGaAs heterojunction system that contains a high-mobility
two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG). Due to the complex layer structure of this
material the Kerr rotation signals contain information from electron spins in
three different layers: the 2DEG layer, a GaAs epilayer in the heterostructure,
and the underlying GaAs substrate. The 2DEG electrons can be observed at low
pump intensities, using that they have a less negative g-factor than electrons
in bulk GaAs regions. At high pump intensities, the Kerr signals from the GaAs
epilayer and the substrate can be distinguished when using a barrier between
the two layers that blocks intermixing of the two electron populations. This
allows for stronger pumping of the epilayer, which results in a shift of the
effective g-factor. Thus, three populations can be distinguished using
differences in g-factor. We support this interpretation by studying how the
spin dynamics of each population has its unique dependence on temperature, and
how they correlate with time-resolved reflectance signals.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figure
Spin-dephasing anisotropy for electrons in a diffusive quasi-1D GaAs wire
We present a numerical study of dephasing of electron spin ensembles in a
diffusive quasi-one-dimensional GaAs wire due to the D'yakonov-Perel'
spin-dephasing mechanism. For widths of the wire below the spin precession
length and for equal strength of Rashba and linear Dresselhaus spin-orbit
fields a strong suppression of spin-dephasing is found. This suppression of
spin-dephasing shows a strong dependence on the wire orientation with respect
to the crystal lattice. The relevance for realistic cases is evaluated by
studying how this effect degrades for deviating strength of Rashba and linear
Dresselhaus fields, and with the inclusion of the cubic Dresselhaus term