No Arabic abstract
The spin relaxation time $T_{1}$ in zinc blende GaN quantum dot is investigated for different magnetic field, well width and quantum dot diameter. The spin relaxation caused by the two most important spin relaxation mechanisms in zinc blende semiconductor quantum dots, {i.e.} the electron-phonon scattering in conjunction with the Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling and the second-order process of the hyperfine interaction combined with the electron-phonon scattering, are systematically studied. The relative importance of the two mechanisms are compared in detail under different conditions. It is found that due to the small spin orbit coupling in GaN, the spin relaxation caused by the second-order process of the hyperfine interaction combined with the electron-phonon scattering plays much more important role than it does in the quantum dot with narrower band gap and larger spin-orbit coupling, such as GaAs and InAs.
The optical orientation of the exciton spin in an ensemble of self-organized cubic GaN/AlN quantum dots is studied by time-resolved photoluminescence. Under a polarized quasi-resonant excitation, the luminescence linear polarization exhibits no temporal decay, even at room temperature. This demonstrates the robustness of the exciton spin polarization in these cubic nitride nanostructures, with characteristic decay times longer than 10 ns.
We observe a strong dependence of the exciton spin relaxation in CdTe quantum dots on the average dot size and the depth of the confining potential. For the excitons confined to the as-grown CdTe quantum dots we find the spin relaxation time to be 4.8 ns. After rapid thermal annealing, which increases the average dot size and leads to weaker confinement, we measure the spin relaxation tine to be 1.5 ns, resulting in smaller values of the absolute polarization of the quantum dot emission. This dramatic enhancement of the spin scattering efficiency upon annealing is attributed to increased mixing between different spin states in larger CdTe quantum dots.
We have studied theoretically the electron spin relaxation in semiconductor quantum dots via interaction with nuclear spins. The relaxation is shown to be determined by three processes: (i) -- the precession of the electron spin in the hyperfine field of the frozen fluctuation of the nuclear spins; (ii) -- the precession of the nuclear spins in the hyperfine field of the electron; and (iii) -- the precession of the nuclear spin in the dipole field of its nuclear neighbors. In external magnetic fields the relaxation of electron spins directed along the magnetic field is suppressed. Electron spins directed transverse to the magnetic field relax completely in a time on the order of the precession period of its spin in the field of the frozen fluctuation of the nuclear spins. Comparison with experiment shows that the hyperfine interaction with nuclei may be the dominant mechanism of electron spin relaxation in quantum dots.
We present a numerical study of spin relaxation in a semiclassical electron ensemble in a large ballistic quantum dot. The dot is defined in a GaAs/AlGaAs heterojunction system with a two-dimensional electron gas, and relaxation occurs due to Dresselhaus and Rashba spin orbit interaction. We find that confinement in a micronscale dot can result in strongly enhanced relaxation with respect to a free two-dimensional electron ensemble, contrary to the established result that strong confinement or frequent momentum scattering reduces relaxation. This effect occurs when the size of the system is on the order of the spin precession length, but smaller than the mean free path.
We study the spin-valley Kondo effect of a silicon quantum dot occupied by $% mathcal{N}$ electrons, with $mathcal{N}$ up to four. We show that the Kondo resonance appears in the $mathcal{N}=1,2,3$ Coulomb blockade regimes, but not in the $mathcal{N}=4$ one, in contrast to the spin-1/2 Kondo effect, which only occurs at $mathcal{N}=$ odd. Assuming large orbital level spacings, the energy states of the dot can be simply characterized by fourfold spin-valley degrees of freedom. The density of states (DOS) is obtained as a function of temperature and applied magnetic field using a finite-U equation-of-motion approach. The structure in the DOS can be detected in transport experiments. The Kondo resonance is split by the Zeeman splitting and valley splitting for double- and triple-electron Si dots, in a similar fashion to single-electron ones. The peak structure and splitting patterns are much richer for the spin-valley Kondo effect than for the pure spin Kondo effect.