Electron-electron scattering effect on spin relaxation in multi-valley nanostructures

Abstract

We develop a theory of effects of electron-electron collisions on the Dyakonov-Perel' spin relaxation in multi-valley quantum wells. It is shown that the electron-electron scattering rate which governs the spin relaxation is different from that in a single-valley system. The theory is applied to Si/SiGe (001)-grown quantum wells where two valleys are simultaneously populated by free carriers. The dependences of the spin relaxation rate on temperature, electron concentration and valley-orbit splitting are calculated and discussed. We demonstrate that in a wide range of temperatures the electron-electron collisions can govern spin relaxation in high-quality Si/SiGe quantum wells.

6 pages, 4 figures, EPL style, revised version

References in corpus (4)

• High temperature spin dephasing in n-typed GaAs quantum wells
• Electric field effect on electron spin splitting in SiGe/Si quantum wells
• Spin-orbit effect on electron-electron interaction and fine structure of electron complexes in quantum dots
• Multi-valley spin relaxation in the presence of high in-plane electric fields in $n$-type GaAs quantum wells