Light-induced nuclear quadrupolar relaxation in semiconductors

Abstract

Light excitation of a semiconductor, known to dynamically-polarize the nuclear spins by hyperfine contact interaction with the photoelectrons, also generates an intrinsic nuclear depolarization mechanism. This novel relaxation process arises from the modulation of the nuclear quadrupolar Hamiltonian by photoelectron trapping and recombination at nearby localized states. For nuclei near shallow donors, the usual diffusion radius is replaced by a smaller, quadrupolar, radius. If the light excitation conditions correspond to partial donor occupation by photoelectrons, the nuclear magnetization and the nuclear field can be decreased by more than one order of magnitude.

References in corpus (1)

• Nuclear Spins as Quantum Memory in Semiconductor Nanostructures

Cited by in corpus (6)

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• Quantum computing by optical control of electron spins
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• Dynamics of a mesoscopic nuclear spin ensemble interacting with an optically driven electron spin
• Hyperfine interaction in InAs/GaAs self-assembled quantum dots : dynamical nuclear polarization versus spin relaxation
• Alignment of nuclear spins in single quantum dots using unpolarized light