Phase velocity of drifting spin wave packets in semiconductor two-dimensional electron gas

Abstract

We investigated the drift and diffusion dynamics of spin wave packets under spin–orbit effective magnetic fields in two-dimensional electron systems. A simplified model with a spin drift-diffusion equation predicted that the spin phase velocity will change over time from a large negative value to a small positive value. Kerr rotation microscopy revealed the trend we expected for the phase velocity in spin wave packets in a GaAs quantum well. Monte-Carlo simulations agreed with the experiment and showed that the phase velocity can be simply characterized by the spin–orbit parameters and the size ratio between the instantaneous and initial wave packets.