Spin relaxation due to the Bir-Aronov-Pikus mechanism in intrinsic and $p$-type GaAs quantum wells from a fully microscopic approach

Abstract

We study the electron spin relaxation in intrinsic and $p$-type (001) GaAs quantum wells by constructing and numerically solving the kinetic spin Bloch equations. All the relevant scatterings are explicitly included, especially the spin-flip electron-heavy hole exchange scattering which leads to the Bir-Aronov-Pikus spin relaxation. We show that, due to the neglection of the nonlinear terms in the electron-heavy hole exchange scattering in the Fermi-golden-rule approach, the spin relaxation due to the Bir-Aronov-Pikus mechanism is greatly exaggerated at moderately high electron density and low temperature in the literature. We compare the spin relaxation time due to the Bir-Aronov-Pikus mechanism with that due to the D'yakonov-Perel' mechanism which is also calculated from the kinetic spin Bloch equations with all the scatterings, especially the spin-conserving electron-electron and electron-heavy hole scatterings, included. We find that, in intrinsic quantum wells, the effect from the Bir-Aronov-Pikus mechanism is much smaller than that from the D'yakonov-Perel' mechanism at low temperature, and it is smaller by no more than one order of magnitude at high temperature. In $p$-type quantum wells, the spin relaxation due to the Bir-Aronov-Pikus mechanism is also much smaller than the one due to the D'yakonov-Perel' mechanism at low temperature and becomes comparable to each other at higher temperature when the hole density and the width of the quantum well are large enough. We claim that unlike in the bulk samples, the Bir-Aronov-Pikus mechanism hardly dominates the spin relaxation in two-dimensional samples.

10 pages, 6 figures, Phys. Rev. B 77, 2008, in press

References in corpus (8)

• High temperature spin dephasing in n-typed GaAs quantum wells
• Effect of initial spin polarization on spin dephasing and electron g factor in a high-mobility two-dimensional electron system
• Hot-electron effect in spin dephasing in $n$-type GaAs quantum wells
• Spin relaxation in $n$-type GaAs quantum wells from a full microscopic approach
• Detection of large magneto-anisotropy of electron spin dephasing in a high-mobility two-dimensional electron system in a $[001]$ GaAs/AlGaAs quantum well
• Multi-subband effect in spin dephasing in semiconductor quantum wells
• Spin relaxation under identical Dresselhaus and Rashba coupling strengths in GaAs quantum wells
• Spin relaxation time, spin dephasing time and ensemble spin dephasing time in $n$-type GaAs quantum wells

Cited by in corpus (11)

• Semiconductor Spin Noise Spectroscopy: Fundamentals, Accomplishments, and Challenges
• Electron spin relaxation in bulk III-V semiconductors from a fully microscopic kinetic spin Bloch equation approach
• Electron spin relaxation in paramagnetic Ga(Mn)As quantum wells
• Density dependence of spin relaxation in GaAs quantum well at room temperature
• Kinetics of spin coherence of electrons in $n$-type InAs quantum wells under intense terahertz laser fields
• Hole spin relaxation in $p$-type (111) GaAs quantum wells
• A virtual intersubband spin-flip spin-orbit coupling induced spin relaxation in GaAs (110) quantum wells
• Hole spin relaxation in $p$-type GaAs quantum wires
• Electron spin relaxation in n-type InAs quantum wires
• Spin relaxation in $n$-type ZnO quantum wells
• Effect of Singwi-Tosi-Land-Sjölander local field correction on spin relaxation in $n$-type GaAs quantum wells at low temperature