Electron spin dynamics due to hyperfine coupling in quantum dots

Abstract

The dynamics of spins in semiconductor quantum dots often is controlled by their hyperfine coupling to nuclear spins. We develop a straightforward and efficient approach to describe the dynamics and the effective decoherence of the electron spins due to hyperfine coupling in realistic quantum dots. Systems with a large number of nuclei and an arbitrary initial nuclear polarization for which the number of nuclei initially flipped over is much less than the total number of nuclei are treated. This treatment employs a pole approximation within a Schr\"odinger equation of motion for the state of the coupled electron and nuclear spin system, and it allows us to treat systems with arbitrary initial conditions. We find that typical time scales for the effective spin decoherence are on the order of tens of microseconds.