Linear Dresselhaus Research Articles

Electron spin relaxation control in single electron QDs

So far, all reviews and control approaches of spin relaxation have been done on lateral single electron quantum dots. In such structures, many efforts have been done, in order to eliminate spin-lattice relaxation, to obtain equal Rashba and linear Dresselhaus parameters. But, ratio of these parameters can be adjustable up to 0.7 in a material like GaAs under high-electric field magnitudes. In this article we have proposed a single electron QD structure, where confinements in all of three directions are considered to be almost identical. In this case the effect of cubic Dresselhaus interaction will have a significant amount, which undermines the linear effect of Dresselhaus while it was destructive in lateral QDs. Then it enhances the ratio of the Rashba and Dresselhaus parameters in the proposed structure as much as required and decreases the spin states up and down mixing and the deviation angle from the net spin-down As a result to the least possible value.

Vanishing of interband light absorption in a persistent spin helix state.

Spin-orbit coupling plays an important role in various properties of very different materials. Moreover efforts are underway to control the degree and quality of spin-orbit coupling in materials with a concomitant control of transport properties. We calculate the frequency dependent optical conductivity in systems with both Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling. We find that when the linear Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling is tuned to be equal to the Rashba spin-orbit coupling, the interband optical conductivity disappears. This is taken to be the signature of the recovery of SU(2) symmetry. The presence of the cubic Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling modifies the dispersion relation of the charge carriers and the velocity operator. Thus the conductivity is modified, but the interband contribution remains suppressed at most but not all photon energies for a cubic coupling of reasonable magnitude. Hence, such a measurement can serve as a diagnostic probe of engineered spin-orbit coupling.

Snaking states on a cylindrical surface in a perpendicular magnetic field

We calculate electronic states on a closed cylindrical surface as a model of a core-shell nanowire. The length of the cylinder can be infinite or finite. We define cardinal points on the circumference of the cylinder and consider a spatially uniform magnetic field perpendicular to the cylinder axis, in the direction South-North. The orbital motion of the electrons depends on the radial component of the field which is nonuniform around the circumference: it is equal to the total field at North and South, but vanishes at the West and East sides. For a strong field, when the magnetic length is comparable to the radius of the cylinder, the electronic states at North and South become localized cyclotron orbits, whereas at East and West the states become long and narrow snaking orbits propagating along the cylinder. The energy of the cyclotron states increases with the magnetic field whereas the energy of the snaking states is stable. Consequently, at high magnetic fields the electron density vanishes at North and South and concentrates at East and West. We include spin-orbit interaction with linear Rashba and Dresselhaus models. For a cylinder of finite length the Dresselhaus interaction produces an axial twist of the charge density relative to the center of the wire, which may be amplified in the presence of the Rashba interaction.

Terahertz out-of-plane resonances due to spin-orbit coupling

A microscopic kinetic theory is developed which allows to investigate non-Abelian SU(2) systems interacting with mean fields and spin-orbit coupling under magnetic fields in one, two, and three dimensions. The coupled kinetic equations for the scalar and spin components are presented and linearized with respect to an external electric field. The dynamical classical and quantum Hall effect are described in this way as well as the anomalous Hall effect for which a new symmetric dynamical contribution to the conductivity is presented. The coupled density and spin response functions to an electric field are derived including arbitrary magnetic fields. The magnetic field induces a staircase structure at frequencies of the Landau levels. It is found that for linear Dresselhaus and Rashba spin-orbit coupling a dynamical out-of-plane spin response appears at these Landau level frequencies establishing terahertz resonances.

Electric field dependence of the spin relaxation anisotropy in (111) GaAs/AlGaAs quantum wells

Time-resolved optical spectroscopy experiments in (111)-oriented GaAs/AlGaAs quantum wells (QWs) show a strong electric field dependence of the conduction electron spin relaxation anisotropy. This results from the interplay between the Dresselhaus and Rashba spin splitting in this system with C3v symmetry. By varying the electric field applied perpendicular to the QW plane from 20 to 50 kV cm−1 the anisotropy of the spin relaxation time parallel (τs∥) and perpendicular (τs⊥) to the growth axis can be first canceled and eventually inversed with respect to the one usually observed in III–V zinc-blende QW (τs⊥ = 2τs∥). This dependence stems from the nonlinear contributions of the k-dependent conduction band spin splitting terms which begin to play the dominant spin relaxing role while the linear Dresselhaus terms are compensated by the Rashba ones through the applied bias. A spin density matrix model for the conduction band spin splitting including both linear and cubic terms of the Dresselhaus Hamiltonian is used which allows a quantitative description of the measured electric field dependence of the spin relaxation anisotropy. The existence of an isotropic point where the spin relaxation tensor reduces to a scalar is predicted and confirmed experimentally. The spin splitting compensation electric field and collision processes type in the QW can be likewise directly extracted from the model without complementary measurements.

Tailoring spin-orbit torque in diluted magnetic semiconductors

We study the spin orbit torque arising from an intrinsic linear Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling in a single layer III-V diluted magnetic semiconductor. We investigate the transport properties and spin torque using the linear response theory, and we report here: (1) a strong correlation exists between the angular dependence of the torque and the anisotropy of the Fermi surface; (2) the spin orbit torque depends nonlinearly on the exchange coupling. Our findings suggest the possibility to tailor the spin orbit torque magnitude and angular dependence by structural design.

Spin—orbit interaction in coupled quantum wells

We theoretically investigate the spin—orbit interaction in GaAs/AlxGa1−xAs coupled quantum wells. We consider the contribution of the interface-related Rashba term as well as the linear and cubic Dresselhaus terms to the spin splitting. For the coupled quantum wells which bear an inherent structure inversion asymmetry, the same probability density distribution of electrons in the two step quantum wells results in a large spin splitting from the interface term. If the widths of the two step quantum wells are different, the electron probability density in the wider step quantum well is considerably higher than that in the narrower one, resulting in the decrease of the spin splitting from the interface term. The results also show that the spin splitting of the coupled quantum well is not significantly larger than that of a step quantum well.

Unified theory of spin dynamics in a two-dimensional electron gas with arbitrary spin-orbit coupling strength at finite temperature

We study the spin dynamics in the presence of impurity and electron-electron (e-e) scattering in a III-V semiconductor quantum well with arbitrary spin-orbit coupling (SOC) strength and symmetry at finite temperature. We derive the coupled spin-charge dynamic equations in the presence of inelastic scattering and provide a new formalism that describes the spin relaxation and dynamics in both the weak and the strong SOC regimes in a unified way. In the weak SOC regime, as expected, our theory reproduces all previous zero-temperature results, most of which have focused on impurity-scattering induced spin-charge dynamics. In the regime where the strength of the Rashba and linear Dresselhaus SOC match, known as the SU(2) symmetry point, experiments have observed the spin-helix mode with a large spin-lifetime whose unexplained nonmonotonic temperature dependence peaks at around 75 K. As a key test of our theory, we are able to naturally explain quantitatively this nonmonotonic dependence and show that it arises as a competition between the Dyakonov-Perel mechanism, suppressed at the SU(2) point, and the Elliott-Yafet mechanism. In the strong SOC regime, we show that our theory directly reproduces the only previous known analytical result at the SU(2) symmetry point in the ballistic regime. It also explains, as we have shown previously, the rise of damped oscillating dynamics when the electron scattering time is larger than half of the spin precession time due to the SOC. Hence we provide a unified theory of the spin dynamics in two-dimensional electron gases in the full phase diagram experimentally accessible.

Zero field spin splitting in asymmetric quantum wells

Spin splitting of asymmetric quantum wells is theoretically investigated in the absence of any electric field, including the contribution of interface-related Rashba spin-orbit interaction as well as linear and cubic Dresselhaus spin-orbit interaction. The effect of interface asymmetry on three types of spin-orbit interaction is discussed. The results show that interface-related Rashba and linear Dresselhaus spin-orbit interaction can be increased and cubic Dresselhaus spin-orbit interaction can be decreased by well structure design. For wide quantum wells, the cubic Dresselhaus spin-orbit interaction dominates under certain conditions, resulting in decreased spin relaxation time.

Impact of Dresselhaus versus Rashba spin-orbit coupling on the Holstein polaron

We utilize an exact variational numerical procedure to calculate the ground-state properties of a polaron in the presence of Rashba and linear Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling. We find that when the linear Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling approaches the Rashba spin-orbit coupling, the Van Hove singularity in the density of states will be shifted away from the bottom of the band and finally disappear when the two spin-orbit couplings are tuned to be equal. The effective mass will be suppressed; the trend will become more significant for low phonon frequency. The presence of two dominant spin-orbit couplings will make it possible to tune the effective mass with more varied observables.

Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit interaction in semiconductor quantum wells

We theoretically investigate the Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit interaction in AlAs/GaAs/Al0.3Ga0.7As/AlAs step-quantum wells. The ratio of Rashba and Dresselhaus spin splitting can be effectively manipulated by the well width and step width in the absence of electric field and magnetic field. When the well width of the step-quantum well is wider than 10 nm, the total spin splitting, which contains the contribution of interface as well as linear and cubic Dresselhaus terms, is always the greatest when the width of GaAs layer equals to about 2 nm. When the well width is wider than 2 nm, two different step widths can meet the SU(2) symmetry conditions, the smaller one of them results in maximum spin relaxation time. We also predict the application of the step-quantum well in spintronic devices.

Quantitative modeling of spin relaxation in quantum dots

We use numerically exact diagonalization to calculate the spin-orbit and phonon-induced triplet-singlet relaxation rate in a two-electron quantum dot exposed to a tilted magnetic field. Our scheme includes a three-dimensional description of the quantum dot, the Rashba and the linear and cubic Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling, the ellipticity of the quantum dot, and the full angular description of the magnetic field. We are able to find reasonable agreement with the experimental results of Meunier et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 126601 (2007)] in terms of the singlet-triplet energy splitting and the spin relaxation rate, respectively. We analyze in detail the effects of the spin-orbit factors, magnetic-field angles, and the dimensionality, and discuss the origins of the remaining deviations from the experimental data.

Magnetic-field-induced spin texture in a quantum wire with linear Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling

A quantum wire with strong Rashba spin-orbit interaction is known to exhibit a so-called spin texturing effect in presence of a moderate external magnetic field acting transverse to the wire axis and parallel to the symmetry-breaking ``gate'' electric field causing Rashba interaction. This effect typically disappears when the external magnetic field is made stronger than the effective spin-orbit magnetic field due to the Rashba interaction. In this work, we present a detailed study of the spin texturing phenomenon in a quantum wire with strong linear Dresselhaus spin-orbit interaction and an external transverse magnetic field. Unlike the pure Rashba case, we observe a persistent spin texture even in the limit when the external magnetic field is large and much stronger than the effective spin-orbit magnetic field due to Dresselhaus interaction. Magnetic field dependence of spin texture is therefore an experimentally viable method for identifying the dominant spin-orbit interaction in a zinc-blende quantum wire. We show that the local distribution of the spin density can be modulated by spin-orbit coupling strength, magnetic field, and the Fermi level of the electron gas.

Massless Dirac fermions in an electromagnetic field

We study the relations between massless Dirac fermions in an electromagneticfield and atoms in quantum optics. After getting the solutions for the energyspectrum, we show that it is possible to reproduce the 2D Dirac Hamiltonian,with all its quantum relativistic effects, in a controllable system such as asingle trapped ion, through the Jaynes–Cummings and anti-Jaynes–Cummingsmodels. Also we show that under certain conditions, the evolution of the DiracHamiltonian provides us with Rashba spin–orbit and linear Dresselhaus couplings.Considering the multimode multiphoton Jaynes–Cummings model interacting withN modes of an electromagnetic field prepared in general pure quantum states, we analyze theRabi oscillation. Evaluating the time evolution of the Dirac position operator, we determinethe Zitterbewegung frequency and the corresponding oscillating term as a function of theelectromagnetic field.

Spin and charge transport in U-shaped one-dimensional channels with spin-orbit couplings

A general form of the Hamiltonian for electrons confined to a curved one-dimensional (1D) channel with spin-orbit coupling (SOC) linear in momentum is rederived and is applied to a U-shaped channel. Discretizing the derived continuous 1D Hamiltonian to a tight-binding version, the Landauer--Keldysh formalism (LKF) for nonequilibrium transport can be applied. Spin transport through the U-channel based on the LKF is compared with previous quantum mechanical approaches. The role of a curvature-induced geometric potential which was previously neglected in the literature of the ring issue is also revisited. Transport regimes between nonadiabatic, corresponding to weak SOC or sharp turn, and adiabatic, corresponding to strong SOC or smooth turn, is discussed. Based on the LKF, interesting charge and spin transport properties are further revealed. For the charge transport, the interplay between the Rashba and the linear Dresselhaus (001) SOCs leads to an additional modulation to the local charge density in the half-ring part of the U-channel, which is shown to originate from the angle-dependent spin-orbit potential. For the spin transport, theoretically predicted eigenstates of the Rashba rings, Dresselhaus rings, and the persistent spin-helix state are numerically tested by the present quantum transport calculation.

Relaxation mechanisms of the persistent spin helix

We study the lifetime of the persistent spin helix in semiconductor quantum wells with equal Rashba and linear Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling strengths. In order to address the temperature dependence of the relevant spin relaxation mechanisms we derive and solve a semiclassical spin diffusion equation taking into account the effects of spin-dependent impurity scattering, cubic Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling and electron-electron interactions. For the experimentally relevant regime we find that the lifetime of the persistent spin helix is mainly determined by the interplay of cubic Dresselhaus spin-orbit interaction and electron-electron interactions. We propose that even longer lifetimes can be achieved by generating a spatially damped spin profile instead of the persistent spin helix state.

Spin dynamics in the strong spin-orbit coupling regime

We study the spin dynamics in a high-mobility two-dimensional electron gas with generic spin-orbit interactions (SOI's). We derive a set of spin-dynamics equations that capture purely exponentially the damped oscillatory spin evolution modes observed in different regimes of SOI strength. Hence we provide a full treatment of the D'yakonov-Perel mechanism by using the microscopic linear-response theory from the weak to the strong SOI limit. We show that the damped oscillatory modes appear when the electron scattering time is larger than half of the spin precession time due to the SOI, in agreement with recent observations. We propose a way to measure the scattering time and the relative strength of Rashba and linear Dresselhaus SOI's based on these modes and optical grating experiments. We discuss the physical interpretation of each of these modes in the context of Rabi oscillation.

Modeling of diffusion of injected electron spins in spin-orbit coupled microchannels

We report on a theoretical study of spin dynamics of an ensemble of spin-polarized electrons injected in a diffusive microchannel with linear Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling. We explore the dependence of the spin-precession and spin-diffusion lengths on the strengths of spin-orbit interaction and external magnetic fields, microchannel width, and orientation. Our results are based on numerical Monte Carlo simulations and on approximate analytical formulas both treating the spin-dynamics quantum mechanically. We conclude that spin-diffusion lengths comparable or larger than the precession length occur (i) in the vicinity of the persistent spin helix regime for arbitrary channel width and (ii) in channels of similar or smaller width than the precession length, independent of the ratio of Rashba and Dresselhaus fields. For similar strengths of the Rashba and Dresselhaus fields, the steady-state spin-density oscillates or remains constant along the channel for channels parallel to the in-plane diagonal crystal directions. An oscillatory spin-polarization pattern tilted by $45\ifmmode^\circ\else\textdegree\fi{}$ with respect to the channel axis is predicted for channels along the main cubic crystal directions. For typical experimental system parameters, magnetic fields on the order of tesla are required to affect the spin-diffusion and spin-precession lengths.

Random walk approach to spin dynamics in a two-dimensional electron gas with spin-orbit coupling

We introduce and solve a semi-classical random walk (RW) model that describes the dynamics of spin polarization waves in zinc-blende semiconductor quantum wells. We derive the dispersion relations for these waves, including the Rashba, linear and cubic Dresselhaus spin-orbit interactions, as well as the effects of an electric field applied parallel to the spin polarization wavevector. In agreement with fully quantum mechanical calculations [Kleinert and Bryksin, Phys. Rev. B \textbf{76}, 205326 (2007)], the RW approach predicts that spin waves acquire a phase velocity in the presence of the field that crosses zero at a nonzero wavevector, $q_0$. In addition, we show that the spin-wave decay rate is independent of field at $q_0$ but increases as $(q-q_0)^2$ for $q\neq q_0$. These predictions can be tested experimentally by suitable transient spin grating experiments.

Spin-orbit coupling and anisotropic exchange in two-electron double quantum dots

The influence of the spin-orbit interactions on the energy spectrum of two-electron laterally coupled quantum dots is investigated. The effective Hamiltonian for a spin qubit pair proposed in Baruffa et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 126401 (2010)] is confronted with exact numerical results in single and double quantum dots in zero and finite magnetic field. The anisotropic exchange Hamiltonian is found quantitatively reliable in double dots in general. There are two findings of particular practical importance: (i) the model stays valid even for maximal possible interdot coupling (a single dot), due to the absence of a coupling to the nearest excited level, a fact following from the dot symmetry. (ii) In a weak-coupling regime, the Heitler-London approximation gives quantitatively correct anisotropic exchange parameters even in a finite magnetic field, although this method is known to fail for the isotropic exchange. The small discrepancy between the analytical model (which employs the linear Dresselhaus and Bychkov-Rashba spin-orbit terms) and the numerical data for GaAs quantum dots is found to be mostly due to the cubic Dresselhaus term.