Kinetics of spin coherence of electrons inn-type InAs quantum wells under intense terahertz laser fields

Abstract

Spin kinetics in $n$-type InAs quantum wells under intense terahertz laser fields is investigated by developing fully microscopic kinetic spin Bloch equations via the Floquet-Markov theory and the nonequilibrium Green's function approach, with all the relevant scattering, such as the electron-impurity, electron-phonon, and electron-electron Coulomb scattering explicitly included. We find that a finite steady-state terahertz spin polarization induced by the terahertz laser field, first predicted by Cheng and Wu [Appl. Phys. Lett. 86, 032107 (2005)] in the absence of dissipation, exists even in the presence of all the scattering. We further discuss the effects of the terahertz laser fields on the spin relaxation and the steady-state spin polarization. It is found that the terahertz laser fields can strongly affect the spin relaxation via hot-electron effect and the terahertz-field-induced effective magnetic field in the presence of spin-orbit coupling. The two effects compete with each other, giving rise to nonmonotonic dependence of the spin-relaxation time as well as the amplitude of the steady-state spin polarization on the terahertz field strength and frequency. The terahertz field dependences of these quantities are investigated for various impurity densities, lattice temperatures, and strengths of the spin-orbit coupling. Finally, the importance of the electron-electron Coulomb scattering on spin kinetics is also addressed.