389 research outputs found
Theory of excitons in cubic III-V semiconductor GaAs, InAs and GaN quantum dots: fine structure and spin relaxation
Exciton fine structures in cubic III-V semiconductor GaAs, InAs and GaN
quantum dots are investigated systematically and the exciton spin relaxation in
GaN quantum dots is calculated by first setting up the effective exciton
Hamiltonian. The electron-hole exchange interaction Hamiltonian, which consists
of the long- and short-range parts, is derived within the effective-mass
approximation by taking into account the conduction, heavy- and light-hole
bands, and especially the split-off band. The scheme applied in this work
allows the description of excitons in both the strong and weak confinement
regimes. The importance of treating the direct electron-hole Coulomb
interaction unperturbatively is demonstrated. We show in our calculation that
the light-hole and split-off bands are negligible when considering the exciton
fine structure, even for GaN quantum dots, and the short-range exchange
interaction is irrelevant when considering the optically active doublet
splitting. We point out that the long-range exchange interaction, which is
neglected in many previous works, contributes to the energy splitting between
the bright and dark states, together with the short-range exchange interaction.
Strong dependence of the optically active doublet splitting on the anisotropy
of dot shape is reported. Large doublet splittings up to 600 eV, and even
up to several meV for small dot size with large anisotropy, is shown in GaN
quantum dots. The spin relaxation between the lowest two optically active
exciton states in GaN quantum dots is calculated, showing a strong dependence
on the dot anisotropy. Long exciton spin relaxation time is reported in GaN
quantum dots. These findings are in good agreement with the experimental
results.Comment: 22+ pages, 16 figures, several typos in the published paper are
corrected in re
A Renormalization-Group approach to the Coulomb Gap
The free energy of the Coulomb Gap problem is expanded as a set of Feynman
diagrams, using the standard diagrammatic methods of perturbation theory. The
gap in the one-particle density of states due to long-ranged interactions
corresponds to a renormalization of the two-point vertex function. By
collecting the leading order logarithmic corrections we have derived the
standard result for the density of states in the critical dimension, d=1. This
method, which is shown to be identical to the approach of Thouless, Anderson
and Palmer to spin glasses, allows us to derive the strong-disorder behaviour
of the density of states. The use of the renormalization group allows this
derivation to be extended to all disorders, and the use of an epsilon-expansion
allows the method to be extended to d=2 and d=3. We speculate that the
renormalization group equations can also be derived diagrammatically, allowing
a simple derivation of the crossover behaviour observed in the case of weak
disorder.Comment: 16 pages, LaTeX. Diagrams available on request from
[email protected]. Changes to figure 4 and second half of section
Numerical study of resonant spin relaxation in quasi-1D channels
Recent experiments demonstrate that a ballistic version of spin resonance,
mediated by spin-orbit interaction, can be induced in narrow channels of a
high-mobility GaAs two-dimensional electron gas by matching the spin precession
frequency with the frequency of bouncing trajectories in the channel. Contrary
to the typical suppression of Dyakonov-Perel' spin relaxation in confined
geometries, the spin relaxation rate increases by orders of magnitude on
resonance. Here, we present Monte Carlo simulations of this effect to explore
the roles of varying degrees of disorder and strength of spin-orbit
interaction. These simulations help to extract quantitative spin-orbit
parameters from experimental measurements of ballistic spin resonance, and may
guide the development of future spintronic devices
Imaging spin flows in semiconductors subject to electric, magnetic, and strain fields
Using scanning Kerr microscopy, we directly acquire two-dimensional images of
spin-polarized electrons flowing laterally in bulk epilayers of n:GaAs. Optical
injection provides a local dc source of polarized electrons, whose subsequent
drift and/or diffusion is controlled with electric, magnetic, and - in
particular - strain fields. Spin precession induced by controlled uniaxial
stress along the axes demonstrates the direct k-linear spin-orbit
coupling of electron spin to the shear (off-diagonal) components of the strain
tensor.Comment: 5 pages, 5 color figure
Slow imbalance relaxation and thermoelectric transport in graphene
We compute the electronic component of the thermal conductivity (TC) and the
thermoelectric power (TEP) of monolayer graphene, within the hydrodynamic
regime, taking into account the slow rate of carrier population imbalance
relaxation. Interband electron-hole generation and recombination processes are
inefficient due to the non-decaying nature of the relativistic energy spectrum.
As a result, a population imbalance of the conduction and valence bands is
generically induced upon the application of a thermal gradient. We show that
the thermoelectric response of a graphene monolayer depends upon the ratio of
the sample length to an intrinsic length scale l_Q, set by the imbalance
relaxation rate. At the same time, we incorporate the crucial influence of the
metallic contacts required for the thermopower measurement (under open circuit
boundary conditions), since carrier exchange with the contacts also relaxes the
imbalance. These effects are especially pronounced for clean graphene, where
the thermoelectric transport is limited exclusively by intercarrier collisions.
For specimens shorter than l_Q, the population imbalance extends throughout the
sample; the TC and TEP asymptote toward their zero imbalance relaxation limits.
In the opposite limit of a graphene slab longer than l_Q, at non-zero doping
the TC and TEP approach intrinsic values characteristic of the infinite
imbalance relaxation limit. Samples of intermediate (long) length in the doped
(undoped) case are predicted to exhibit an inhomogeneous temperature profile,
whilst the TC and TEP grow linearly with the system size. In all cases except
for the shortest devices, we develop a picture of bulk electron and hole number
currents that flow between thermally conductive leads, where steady-state
recombination and generation processes relax the accumulating imbalance.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figure
The role of electron-electron scattering in spin transport
We investigate spin transport in quasi 2DEG formed by III-V semiconductor
heterojunctions using the Monte Carlo method. The results obtained with and
without electron-electron scattering are compared and appreciable difference
between the two is found. The electron-electron scattering leads to suppression
of Dyakonov-Perel mechanism (DP) and enhancement of Elliott-Yafet mechanism
(EY). Finally, spin transport in InSb and GaAs heterostructures is investigated
considering both DP and EY mechanisms. While DP mechanism dominates spin
decoherence in GaAs, EY mechanism is found to dominate in high mobility InSb.
Our simulations predict a lower spin relaxation/decoherence rate in wide gap
semiconductors which is desirable for spin transport.Comment: to appear in Journal of Applied Physic
Spin tunneling through an indirect barrier
Spin-dependent tunneling through an indirect bandgap barrier like the
GaAs/AlAs/GaAs heterostructure along [001] direction is studied by the
tight-binding method. The tunneling is characterized by the proportionality of
the Dresselhaus Hamiltonians at and points in the barrier and by
Fano resonances. The present results suggest that large spin polarization can
be obtained for energy windows that exceed significantly the spin splitting. We
also formulate two conditions that are necessary for the existence of energy
windows with large polarization.Comment: 19 pages, 7 figure
Orbital mechanism of the circular photogalvanic effect in quantum wells
It is shown that the free-carrier (Drude) absorption of circularly polarized
radiation in quantum well structures leads to an electric current flow. The
photocurrent reverses its direction upon switching the light helicity. A pure
orbital mechanism of such a circular photogalvanic effect is proposed that is
based on interference of different pathways contributing to the light
absorption. Calculation shows that the magnitude of the helicity dependent
photocurrent in -doped quantum well structures corresponds to recent
experimental observations.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, to be published in JETP Letter
Anomalous in-plane magneto-optical anisotropy of self-assembled quantum dots
We report on a complex nontrivial behavior of the optical anisotropy of
quantum dots that is induced by a magnetic field in the plane of the sample. We
find that the optical axis either rotates in the opposite direction to that of
the magnetic field or remains fixed to a given crystalline direction. A
theoretical analysis based on the exciton pseudospin Hamiltonian unambiguously
demonstrates that these effects are induced by isotropic and anisotropic
contributions to the heavy-hole Zeeman term, respectively. The latter is shown
to be compensated by a built-in uniaxial anisotropy in a magnetic field B_c =
0.4 T, resulting in an optical response typical for symmetric quantum dots.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure
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