Theory of coherent dynamic nuclear polarization in quantum dots

Abstract

We consider the dynamic nuclear spin polarization (DNP) using two electrons in a double quantum dot in presence of external magnetic field and spin-orbit interaction, in various schemes of periodically repeated sweeps through the S-T+ avoided crossing. By treating the problem semi-classically, we find that generally the DNP have two distinct contributions - a geometrical polarization and a dynamic polarization, which have different dependence on the control parameters such as the sweep rates and waiting times in each period. Both terms show non-trivial dependence on those control parameter. We find that even for small spin-orbit term, the dynamical polarization dominates the DNP in presence of a long waiting period near the S-T+ avoided crossing, of the order of the nuclear Larmor precession periods. A detailed numerical analysis of a specific control regime can explain the oscillations observed by Foletti et.~al.~in arXiv:0801.3613.