Suppression of the D'yakonov-Perel' spin relaxation mechanism for all spin components in [111] zincblende quantum wells

Abstract

We apply the D'yakonov-Perel' (DP) formalism to [111]-grown zincblende quantum wells (QWs) to compute the spin lifetimes of electrons in the two-dimensional electron gas. We account for both bulk and structural inversion asymmetry (Rashba) effects. We see that, under certain conditions, the spin splitting vanishes to first order in k, which effectively suppresses the DP spin relaxation mechanism for all spin components. We predict extended spin lifetimes as a result, giving rise to the possibility of enhanced spin storage. We also study [110]-grown QWs, where the effect of structural inversion asymmetry is to augment the spin relaxation rate of the component perpendicular to the well. We derive analytical expressions for the spin lifetime tensor and its proper axes, and see that they are dependent on the relative magnitude of the BIA- and SIA-induced splittings.

v1: 5 pages, 2 figures, submitted to PRL v2: added 1 figure and supporting content, PRB format

References in corpus (8)

• Non-ballistic spin field-effect transistor
• Weak Antilocalization and Spin Precession in Quantum Wells
• Giant Spin Relaxation Anisotropy in Zinc-Blende Heterostructures
• Spin Relaxation Anisotropy in Two-Dimensional Semiconductor Systems
• High temperature gate control of quantum well spin memory
• Non-magnetic semiconductor spin transistor
• Electron Spin Decoherence in Bulk and Quantum Well Zincblende Semiconductors
• Progressive suppression of spin relaxation in 2D channels of finite width

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