Spin dephasing via the spin-orbit interaction (SOI) is a major mechanism limiting the electron spin lifetime in III-V zincblende quantum wells. The dephasing can be suppressed in GaAs(111) quantum wells by applying an electric field. The suppression has been attributed to the compensation of the intrinsic SOI associated by the bulk inversion asymmetry (BIA) of the GaAs lattice by a structural induced asymmetry (SIA) SOI term induced by an electric field. We provide direct experimental evidence for this mechanism by demonstrating the transition between the BIA-dominated to a SIA-dominated regime via photoluminescence measurements carried out over a wide range of applied fields. Spin lifetimes exceeding 100~ns are obtained near the compensating electric field, thus making GaAs (111) QWs excellent candidates for the electrical storage and manipulation of spins.
We present a microscopic theory for transport of the spin polarized charge density wave with both electrons and holes in the $(111)$ GaAs quantum wells. We analytically show that, contradicting to the commonly accepted belief, the spin and charge motions are bound together only in the fully polarized system but can be separated in the case of low spin polarization or short spin lifetime even when the spatial profiles of spin density wave and charge density wave overlap with each other. We further show that, the Coulomb drag between electrons and holes can markedly enhance the hole spin diffusion if the hole spin motion can be separated from the charge motion. In the high spin polarized system, the Coulomb drag can boost the hole spin diffusion coefficient by more than one order of magnitude.
We show by spatially and time-resolved photoluminescence that the application of an electric field transverse to the plane of an intrinsic GaAs (111) quantum well (QW) allows the transport of photogenerated electron spins polarized along the direction perpendicular to the QW plane over distances exceeding 10~$mu$m. We attribute the long spin transport lengths to the compensation of the in-plane effective magnetic field related to the intrinsic spin-orbit (SO) interaction by means of the electrically generated SO-field. Away from SO-compensation, the precession of the spin vector around the SO-field decreases the out-of-plane polarization of the spin ensemble as the electrons move away from the laser generation spot. The results are reproduced by a model for two-dimensional drift-diffusion of spin polarized charge carriers under weak SO-interaction.
Photoluminescence (PL) and reflectivity spectra of a high-quality InGaAs/GaAs quantum well structure reveal a series of ultra-narrow peaks attributed to the quantum confined exciton states. The intensity of these peaks decreases as a function of temperature, while the linewidths demonstrate a complex and peculiar behavior. At low pumping the widths of all peaks remain quite narrow ($< 0.1$ meV) in the whole temperature range studied, $4 - 30K$. At the stronger pumping, the linewidth first increases and than drops down with the temperature rise. Pump-probe experiments show two characteristic time scales in the exciton decay, $< 10$ps and $15 - 45ns$, respectively. We interpret all these data by an interplay between the exciton recombination within the light cone, the exciton relaxation from a non-radiative reservoir to the light cone, and the thermal dissociation of the non-radiative excitons. The broadening of the low energy exciton lines is governed by the radiative recombination and scattering with reservoir excitons while for the higher energy states the linewidths are also dependent on the acoustic phonon relaxation processes.
The electron spin dynamics in (111)-oriented GaAs/AlGaAs quantum wells is studied by timeresolved photoluminescence spectroscopy. By applying an external field of 50 kV/cm a two-order of magnitude increase of the spin relaxation time can be observed reaching values larger than 30 ns; this is a consequence of the electric field tuning of the spin-orbit conduction band splitting which can almost vanish when the Rashba term compensates exactly the Dresselhaus one. The measurements under transverse magnetic field demonstrate that the electron spin relaxation time for the three space directions can be tuned simultaneously with the applied electric field.
(111) Silicon quantum wells have been studied extensively, yet no convincing explanation exists for the experimentally observed breaking of 6 fold valley degeneracy into 2 and 4 fold degeneracies. Here, systematic sp3d5s* tight-binding and effective mass calculations are presented to show that a typical miscut modulates the energy levels which leads to breaking of 6 fold valley degeneracy into 2 lower and 4 raised valleys. An effective mass based valley-projection model is used to determine the directions of valley-minima in tight-binding calculations of large supercells. Tight-binding calculations are in better agreement with experiments compared to effective mass calculations.