Pseudospin-electric coupling for holes beyond the envelope-function approximation

Abstract

In the envelope-function approximation, interband transitions produced by electric fields are neglected. However, electric fields may lead to a spatially local ($k$-independent) coupling of band (internal, pseudospin) degrees of freedom. Such a coupling exists between heavy-hole and light-hole (pseudo-)spin states for holes in III-V semiconductors, such as GaAs, or in group IV semiconductors (germanium, silicon, ...) with broken inversion symmetry. Here, we calculate the electric-dipole (pseudospin-electric) coupling for holes in GaAs from first principles. We find a transition dipole of $0.5$ debye, a significant fraction of that for the hydrogen-atom $1s\to 2p$ transition. In addition, we derive the Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling that is generated by this transition dipole for heavy holes in a triangular quantum well. A quantitative microscopic description of this pseudospin-electric coupling may be important for understanding the origin of spin splitting in quantum wells, spin coherence/relaxation ($T_2^{\ast }/T_1$) times, spin-electric coupling for cavity-QED, electric-dipole spin resonance, and spin non-conserving tunneling in double quantum dot systems.

12 pages, 8 figures; v2: minor revisions/clarifications to address referee comments

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• Probing details of spin--orbit coupling through Pauli spin blockade
• Berry-phase induced entanglement of hole-spin qubits in a microwave cavity
• Theory of superconducting proximity effect in hole-based hybrid semiconductor-superconductor devices
• Quadrupolar photovoltaic effect in the terahertz range in a two-dimensional spin-3/2 hole system
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