We have studied quantum-well-confined holes based on the Luttinger-model description for the valence band of typical semiconductor materials. Even when only the lowest quasi-two-dimensional (quasi-2D) subband is populated, the static spin susceptibility turns out to be very different from the universal isotropic Lindhard-function lineshape obtained for 2D conduction-electron systems. The strongly anisotropic and peculiarly density-dependent spin-related response of 2D holes at long wavelengths should make it possible to switch between easy-axis and easy-plane magnetization in dilute magnetic quantum wells. An effective g factor for 2D hole systems is proposed.
We report measurements of the spin susceptibility in dilute (rs up to 10) AlAs two-dimensional (2D) electrons occupying a single conduction-band valley with an anisotropic in-plane Fermi contour, characterized by longitudinal and transverse effective masses, ml and mt. As the density is decreased, the spin susceptibility is significantly enhanced over its band value, reflecting the role of interaction. Yet the enhancement is suppressed compared to the results of quantum Monte Carlo based calculations that take the finite thickness of the electron layer into account but assume an isotropic effective mass equal to sqrt(ml.mt). Proper treatment of an interacting 2D system with an anisotropic effective mass therefore remains a theoretical challenge.
Quantum Hall ferromagnetic transitions are typically achieved by increasing the Zeeman energy through in-situ sample rotation, while transitions in systems with pseudo-spin indices can be induced by gate control. We report here a gate-controlled quantum Hall ferromagnetic transition between two real spin states in a conventional two-dimensional system without any in-plane magnetic field. We show that the ratio of the Zeeman splitting to the cyclotron gap in a Ge two-dimensional hole system increases with decreasing density owing to inter-carrier interactions. Below a critical density of $sim2.4times 10^{10}$ cm$^{-2}$, this ratio grows greater than $1$, resulting in a ferromagnetic ground state at filling factor $ u=2$. At the critical density, a resistance peak due to the formation of microscopic domains of opposite spin orientations is observed. Such gate-controlled spin-polarizations in the quantum Hall regime opens the door to realizing Majorana modes using two-dimensional systems in conventional, low-spin-orbit-coupling semiconductors.
We develop a microscopic theory of spin relaxation of a two-dimensional electron gas in quantum wells with anisotropic electron scattering. Both precessional and collision-dominated regimes of spin dynamics are studied. It is shown that, in quantum wells with noncentrosymmetric scatterers, the in-plane and out-of-plane spin components are coupled: spin dephasing of carriers initially polarized along the quantum well normal leads to the emergence of an in-plane spin component even in the case of isotropic spin-orbit splitting. In the collision-dominated regime, the spin-relaxation-rate tensor is expressed in terms of the electric conductivity tensor. We also study the effect of an in-plane and out-of-plane external magnetic field on spin dephasing and show that the field dependence of electron spin can be very intricate.
We have obtained analytical expressions for the q-dependent static spin susceptibility of monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides, considering both the electron-doped and hole-doped cases. Our results are applied to calculate spin-related physical observables of monolayer MoS2, focusing especially on in-plane/out-of-plane anisotropies. We find that the hole-mediated RKKY exchange interaction for in-plane impurity-spin components decays with the power law $R^{-5/2}$ as a function of distance $R$, which deviates from the $R^{-2}$ power law normally exhibited by a two-dimensional Fermi liquid. In contrast, the out-of-plane spin response shows the familiar $R^{-2}$ long-range behavior. We also use the spin susceptibility to define a collective g-factor for hole-doped MoS2 systems and discuss its density-dependent anisotropy.
We have investigated spin and carrier dynamics of resident holes in high-mobility two-dimensional hole systems in GaAs/Al$_{0.3}$Ga$_{0.7}$As single quantum wells at temperatures down to 400 mK. Time-resolved Faraday and Kerr rotation, as well as time-resolved photoluminescence spectroscopy are utilized in our study. We observe long-lived hole spin dynamics that are strongly temperature dependent, indicating that in-plane localization is crucial for hole spin coherence. By applying a gate voltage, we are able to tune the observed hole g factor by more than 50 percent. Calculations of the hole g tensor as a function of the applied bias show excellent agreement with our experimental findings.