Polarization memory in single Quantum Dots

We measured the polarization memory of excitonic and biexcitonic optical transitions from single quantum dots at either positive, negative or neutral charge states. Positive, negative and no circular or linear polarization memory was observed for various spectral lines, under the same quasi-resonant excitation below the wetting layer band-gap. We developed a model which explains both qualitatively and quantitatively the experimentally measured polarization spectrum for all these optical transitions. We consider quite generally the loss of spin orientation of the photogenerated electron-hole pair during their relaxation towards the many-carrier ground states. Our analysis unambiguously demonstrates that while electrons maintain their initial spin polarization to a large degree, holes completely dephase.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure

All-Optical Depletion of Dark Excitons from a Semiconductor Quantum Dot

Semiconductor quantum dots are considered to be the leading venue for fabricating on-demand sources of single photons. However, the generation of long-lived dark excitons imposes significant limits on the efficiency of these sources. We demonstrate a technique that optically pumps the dark exciton population and converts it to a bright exciton population, using intermediate excited biexciton states. We show experimentally that our method considerably reduces the DE population while doubling the triggered bright exciton emission, approaching thereby near-unit fidelity of quantum dot depletion.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Polarization sensitive spectroscopy of charged Quantum Dots

We present an experimental and theoretical study of the polarized photoluminescence spectrum of single semiconductor quantum dots in various charge states. We compare our high resolution polarization sensitive spectral measurements with a new many-carrier theoretical model, which was developed for this purpose. The model considers both the isotropic and anisotropic exchange interactions between all participating electron-hole pairs. With this addition, we calculate both the energies and polarizations of all optical transitions between collective, quantum dot confined charge carrier states. We succeed in identifying most of the measured spectral lines. In particular, the lines resulting from singly-, doubly- and triply- negatively charged excitons and biexcitons. We demonstrate that lines emanating from evenly charged states are linearly polarized. Their polarization direction does not necessarily coincide with the traditional crystallographic direction. It depends on the shells of the single carriers, which participate in the recombination process.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figures. Revised versio

Extremely long quasiparticle spin lifetimes in superconducting aluminium using MgO tunnel spin injectors

There has been an intense search in recent years for long-lived spin-polarized carriers for spintronic and quantum-computing devices. Here we report that spin polarized quasi-particles in superconducting aluminum layers have surprisingly long spin-lifetimes, nearly a million times longer than in their normal state. The lifetime is determined from the suppression of the aluminum's superconductivity resulting from the accumulation of spin polarized carriers in the aluminum layer using tunnel spin injectors. A Hanle effect, observed in the presence of small in-plane orthogonal fields, is shown to be quantitatively consistent with the presence of long-lived spin polarized quasi-particles. Our experiments show that the superconducting state can be significantly modified by small electric currents, much smaller than the critical current, which is potentially useful for devices involving superconducting qubits

Theoretical interpretation of the experimental electronic structure of lens shaped, self-assembled InAs/GaAs quantum dots

We adopt an atomistic pseudopotential description of the electronic structure of self-assembled, lens shaped InAs quantum dots within the ``linear combination of bulk bands'' method. We present a detailed comparison with experiment, including quantites such as the single particle electron and hole energy level spacings, the excitonic band gap, the electron-electron, hole-hole and electron hole Coulomb energies and the optical polarization anisotropy. We find a generally good agreement, which is improved even further for a dot composition where some Ga has diffused into the dots.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figures. Submitted to Physical Review