Ballistic spin resonance in multisubband quantum wires

Abstract

Ballistic spin resonance was experimentally observed in a quasi-one-dimensional wire by Frolov et al. [Nature (London) 458, 868 (2009)]. The spin resonance was generated by a combination of an external static magnetic field and the oscillating effective spin-orbit magnetic field due to periodic bouncings of the electrons off the boundaries of a narrow channel. An increase of the D'yakonov-Perel spin relaxation rate was observed when the frequency of the spin-orbit field matched that of the Larmor precession frequency around the external magnetic field. Here we develop a model to account for the D'yakonov-Perel mechanism in multisubband quantum wires with both the Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit interactions. Considering elastic spin-conserving impurity scatterings in the time-evolution operator (Heisenberg representation), we extract the spin relaxation time by evaluating the time-dependent average of the spin operators. The magnetic field dependence of the nonlocal voltage, which is related to the spin relaxation time behavior, shows a wide plateau, in agreement with the experimental observation. This plateau arises due to injection in higher subbands and small-angle scattering. In this quantum mechanical approach, the spin resonance occurs near the spin-orbit induced energy anticrossings of the quantum wire subbands with opposite spins. We also predict anomalous dips in the spin relaxation time as a function of the magnetic field in systems with strong spin-orbit couplings.

8 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (10)

• Zitterbewegung of electronic wave packets in semiconductor nanostructures
• Suppression of Spin Relaxation in Submicron InGaAs Wires
• Intersubband-induced spin-orbit interaction in quantum wells
• Ballistic Spin Resonance
• Electric Dipole Induced Spin Resonance in Disordered Semiconductors
• Electrical generation of pure spin currents in a two-dimensional electron gas
• Enhanced spin-orbit scattering length in narrow Al_xGa_{1-x}N/GaN wires
• Semiclassical path integral approach on spin relaxations in narrow wires
• Electron spin relaxation in n-type InAs quantum wires
• Spin polarization oscillations without spin precession: spin-orbit entangled resonances in quasi-one-dimensional spin transport

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Zitterbewegung and bulk-edge Landau-Zener tunneling in topological insulators
• Spin relaxation in wurtzite nanowires
• Interplay between resonant tunneling and spin precession oscillations in all-electric all-semiconductor spin transistors
• Spin polarization oscillations without spin precession: spin-orbit entangled resonances in quasi-one-dimensional spin transport
• Effects of interaction on field-induced resonances in confined Fermi liquid