Asymmetric optical nuclear spin pumping in a single uncharged quantum dot

Abstract

A highly asymmetric dynamic nuclear spin pumping is observed in a single self assembled InGaAs quantum dot subject to resonant optical pumping of the neutral exciton transition leading to a large maximum polarization of 54%. This dynamic nuclear polarization is found to be much stronger following pumping of the higher energy Zeeman state. Time-resolved measurements allow us to directly monitor the buildup of the nuclear spin polarization in real time and to quantitatively study the dynamics of the process. A strong dependence of the observed dynamic nuclear polarization on the applied magnetic field is found, with resonances in the pumping efficiency being observed for particular magnetic fields. We develop a model that fully accounts for the observed behaviour, where the pumping of the nuclear spin system is due to hyperfine-mediated spin flip transitions between the states of the neutral exciton manifold.

published version; 4+ pages, 3 figures (eps)

References in corpus (12)

• Quantum Computation with Quantum Dots
• Electron spin decoherence in quantum dots due to interaction with nuclei
• Optical pumping of electronic and nuclear spin in single charge-tunable quantum dots
• Long-lived memory for mesoscopic quantum bits
• Electron spin dynamics in quantum dots and related nanostructures due to hyperfine interaction with nuclei
• Nuclear Spin Switch in Semiconductor Quantum Dots
• Nuclear Spins in Nanostructures
• Dynamics of Quantum Dot Nuclear Spin Polarization Controlled by a Single Electron
• Dynamic nuclear polarization of a single charge-tunable InAs/GaAs quantum dot
• Demagnetization of Quantum Dot Nuclear Spins: Breakdown of the Nuclear Spin Temperature Approach
• Optical detection of single electron spin resonance in a quantum dot
• Polarization-dependent shift in excitonic Zeeman splitting of self-assembled InAlAs quantum dots

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Prospects for Spin-Based Quantum Computing
• Nuclear spin physics in quantum dots: an optical investigation
• Theory of excitons in cubic III-V semiconductor GaAs, InAs and GaN quantum dots: fine structure and spin relaxation
• Controlling the Interaction of Electron and Nuclear Spins in a Tunnel-Coupled Quantum Dot
• Dynamic nuclear polarization in InGaAs/GaAs and GaAs/AlGaAs quantum dots under non-resonant ultra-low power optical excitation
• Alignment of nuclear spins in single quantum dots using unpolarized light