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Register a new userEffect of the Pauli principle on photoelectron spin transport in $p^+$ GaAs
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In p+ GaAs thin films, the effect of photoelectron degeneracy on spin transport is investigated theoretically and experimentally by imaging the spin polarization profile as a function of distance from a tightly-focussed light excitation spot. Under degeneracy of the electron gas (high concentration, low temperature), a dip at the center of the polarization profile appears with a polarization maximum at a distance of about $2 ; mu m$ from the center. This counterintuitive result reveals that photoelectron diffusion depends on spin, as a direct consequence of the Pauli principle. This causes a concentration dependence of the spin stiffness while the spin dependence of the mobility is found to be weak in doped material. The various effects which can modify spin transport in a degenerate electron gas under local laser excitation are considered. A comparison of the data with a numerical solution of the coupled diffusion equations reveals that ambipolar coupling with holes increases the steady-state photo-electron density at the excitation spot and therefore the amplitude of the degeneracy-induced polarization dip. Thermoelectric currrents are predicted to depend on spin under degeneracy (spin Soret currents), but these currents are negligible except at very high excitation power where they play a relatively small role. Coulomb spin drag and bandgap renormalization are negligible due to electrostatic screening by the hole gas.
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The effect of an electric field on the spatial charge and spin profiles of photoelectrons in p+-GaAs is studied as a function of lattice and electron temperature. The charge and spin mobilities of photoelectrons are equal in all conditions and exhibit the well known increase as the temperature is lowered. It is shown that this is related mainly to the electron statistics rather than the majority hole statistics. This finding suggests that current theoretical models based on degeneracy of majority carriers cannot fully explain the observed temperature dependence of minority carrier mobility.
Using a microfabricated, p-type GaAs Hall bar, is it shown that the combined application of co-planar electric and magnetic fields enables the observation at 50 K of spatial oscillations of the photoluminescence circular polarization due to the precession of drifting spin-polarized photoelec- trons. Observation of these oscillations as a function of electric field E gives a direct measurement of the minority carrier drift mobility and reveals that, for E = 800 V/cm, spin coherence is preserved over a length as large as 25{mu}m.
By means of time-resolved optical orientation under strong optical pumping, the k-dependence of the electron spin-flip time (t_sf) in undoped GaAs is experimentally determined. t_sf monotonically decreases by more than one order of magnitude when the electron kinetic energy varies from 2 to 30 meV. At the high excitation densities and low temperatures of the reported experiments the main spin-flip mechanism of the conduction band electrons is the Bir-Aronov-Pikus. By means of Monte-Carlo simulations we evidence that phase-space filling effects result in the blocking of the spin flip, yielding an increase of t_sf with excitation density. These effects obtain values of t_sf up to 30 ns at k=0, the longest reported spin-relaxation time in undoped GaAs in the absence of a magnetic field.
A novel spin-spin coupling mechanism that occurs during the transport of spin-polarized minority electrons in semiconductors is described. Unlike the Coulomb spin drag, this coupling arises from the ambipolar electric field which is created by the differential movement of the photoelectrons and the photoholes. Like the Coulomb spin drag, it is a pure spin coupling that does not affect charge diffusion. Experimentally, the coupling is studied in $p^+$ GaAs using polarized microluminescence. The coupling manifests itself as an excitation power dependent reduction in the spin polarization at the excitation spot textit{without} any change of the spatially averaged spin polarization.
The spin dependence of the photoelectron tunnel current from free standing GaAs films into out-of- plane magnetized Cobalt films is demonstrated. The measured spin asymmetry (A) resulting from a change in light helicity, reaches +/- 6% around zero applied tunnel bias and drops to +/- 2% at a bias of -1.6 V applied to the GaAs. This decrease is a result of the drop in the photoelectron spin polarization that results from a reduction in the GaAs surface recombination velocity. The sign of A changes with that of the Cobalt magnetization direction. In contrast, on a (nonmagnetic) Gold film A ~ 0%.
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