Monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides offer the possibility of optical control of the valley degree of freedom. In order to asses the potential of these materials in applications, detailed knowledge of the valley dynamics is essential. In this w
ork, we apply low temperature time-resolved photoluminescence (PL) measurements to investigate exciton valley relaxation dynamics and, in particular, its behavior under strong excitation. At the lowest excitation powers the inter valley scattering time is $simeq 50$ ps, but shortens by more than a factor of two at the highest powers. We attribute this acceleration to either heating of the exciton system or the presence of a dense exciton gas, which could influence the exciton valley properties. Furthermore, we analyze the PL dynamics of excitons and trions. We find that the PL decays for all peaks are bi-exponential and approximately independent of the excitation power. We attribute the short decay to radiative recombination and escape to a reservoir of dark states. The long decay is ascribed to a transfer of excitons back from the reservoir. For the first time, we evaluate the exciton PL decay time of $simeq$ 10 ps. The latter process is valley-conserving and occurs on a timescale of $simeq$ 50 ps.
Magneto-photoluminescence measurements of individual zinc-blende GaAs/AlAs core/shell nanowires are reported. At low temperature a strong emission line at 1.507 eV is observed under low power (nW) excitation. Measurements performed in high magnetic f
ield allowed us to detect in this emission several lines associated with excitons bound to defect pairs. Such lines were observed before in epitaxial GaAs of very high quality, as reported by Kunzel and Ploog. This demonstrates that the optical quality of our GaAs/AlAs core/shell nanowires is comparable to the best GaAs layers grown by molecular beam epitaxy. Moreover, strong free exciton emission is observed even at room temperature. The bright optical emission of our nanowires in room temperature should open the way for numerous optoelectronic device applications.
We report on magneto-transport measurements of a two-dimensional electron gas confined in a Cd$_{0.997}$Mn$_{0.003}$Te quantum well structure under conditions of vanishing Zeeman energy. The electron Zeeman energy has been tuned via the $s-d$ exchang
e interaction in order to probe different quantum Hall states associated with metallic and insulating phases. We have observed that reducing Zeeman energy to zero does not necessary imply the disappearing of quantum Hall states, i.e. a closing of the spin gap. The spin gap value under vanishing Zeeman energy conditions is shown to be dependent on the filling factor. Numerical simulations support a qualitative description of the experimental data presented in terms of a crossing or an avoided-crossing of spin split Landau levels with same orbital quantum number $N$.
Optical absorption measurements are used to probe the spin polarization in the integer and fractional quantum Hall effect regimes. The system is fully spin polarized only at filling factor $ u=1$ and at very low temperatures($sim40$ mK). A small chan
ge in filling factor ($delta uapproxpm0.01$) leads to a significant depolarization. This suggests that the itinerant quantum Hall ferromagnet at $ u=1$ is surprisingly fragile against increasing temperature, or against small changes in filling factor.
In a recent paper [B. A. Piot et al., Phys. Rev. B 72, 245325 (2005)], we have shown that the lifting of the electron spin degeneracy in the integer quantum Hall effect at high filling factors should be interpreted as a magnetic-field-induced Stoner
transition. In this work, we extend the analysis to investigate the influence of the single-particle Zeeman energy on the quantum Hall ferromagnet at high filling factors. The single-particle Zeeman energy is tuned through the application of an additional in-plane magnetic field. Both the evolution of the spin polarization of the system and the critical magnetic field for spin splitting are well described as a function of the tilt angle of the sample in the magnetic field.
