Long spin relaxation time of holes in InGaAs/GaAs quantum wells probed by cyclotron resonance spectroscopy

Abstract

In this paper, we report on a long, ms range, hole spin relaxation time in InGaAs/GaAs quantum wells probed by cyclotron resonance spectroscopy in pulsed magnetic fields. In our experiments, we found strong hysteresis in the spectral weights of cyclotron resonance absorption lines when rapidly changing magnetic field is used for the experiment. The hysteresis vanishes when a much slower changing magnetic field is used. We attribute this behavior to a long energy relaxation time between the two lowest spin-split hole Landau levels, i.e., a long hole spin relaxation time. We also present transition frequencies calculated using a $4\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}4$ Luttinger Hamiltonian, which confirm our findings.