Nuclear spin warm-up in bulk n-GaAs

Abstract

We show that the spin-lattice relaxation in n-type insulating GaAs is dramatically accelerated at low magnetic fields. The origin of this effect, that cannot be explained in terms of well-known diffusion-limited hyperfine relaxation, is found in the quadrupole relaxation, induced by fluctuating donor charges. Therefore, quadrupole relaxation, that governs low field nuclear spin relaxation in semiconductor quantum dots, but was so far supposed to be harmless to bulk nuclei spins in the absence of optical pumping can be studied and harnessed in much simpler model environment of n-GaAs bulk crystal.

5 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Nuclear spin physics in quantum dots: an optical investigation
• Spin relaxation of localized electrons in n-type semiconductors
• Light-induced nuclear quadrupolar relaxation in semiconductors

Cited by in corpus (11)

• Spin polarization recovery and Hanle effect for charge carriers interacting with nuclear spins in semiconductors
• Spin temperature concept verified by optical magnetometry of nuclear spins
• Nuclear spin relaxation in n-GaAs: from insulating to metallic regime
• Warm-up spectroscopy of quadrupole-split nuclear spins in n-GaAs epitaxial layers
• Simultaneous measurements of nuclear spin heat capacity, temperature and relaxation in GaAs microstructures
• Nuclear spin cooling by helicity-alternated optical pumping at weak magnetic fields in $n$-GaAs
• High-efficiency optical pumping of nuclear polarization in a GaAs quantum well
• Spin dynamics of quadrupole nuclei in InGaAs quantum dots
• Nuclear spin-lattice relaxation in p-type GaAs
• Subsecond nuclear spin dynamics in $n$-GaAs
• Slowly generated anomalously large nuclear field in bulk n-AlGaAs