Spin relaxation in $n$-type GaAs quantum wells from a full microscopic approach

Abstract

We perform a full microscopic investigation on the spin relaxation in $n$-type (001) GaAs quantum wells with Al${}_{0.4}$Ga${}_{0.6}$As barrier due to the D'yakonov-perel' mechanism from nearly 20 K to the room temperature by constructing and numerically solving the kinetic spin Bloch equations. We consider all the relevant scattering such as the electron--acoustic-phonon, the electron--longitudinal-optical-phonon, the electron--nonmagnetic-impurity and the electron-electron Coulomb scattering to the spin relaxation. The spin relaxation times calculated from our theory with a fitting spin splitting parameter are in good agreement with the experimental data by Ohno {\em et al.} [Physica E {\bf 6}, 817 (2000)] over the whole temperature regime (from 20 K to 300 K). The value of the fitted spin splitting parameter agrees with many experiments and theoretical calculations. We further show the temperature dependence of the spin relaxation time under various conditions such as electron density, impurity density and well width. We predict a peak solely due to the Coulomb scattering in the spin relaxation time at low temperature ($<50$ K) in samples with low electron density ({\em e.g.}, density less than $1\times 10^{11}$ cm${}^{-2}$) but high mobility. This peak disappears in samples with high electron density ({\em e.g.} $2\times 10^{11}$ cm${}^{-2}$) and/or low mobility. The hot-electron spin kinetics at low temperature is also addressed with many features quite different from the high temperature case predicted.

10 pages, 5 figures, to be published in PRB

References in corpus (11)

• Suppression of Spin Relaxation in Submicron InGaAs Wires
• High temperature spin dephasing in n-typed GaAs quantum wells
• Hot-electron effect in spin dephasing in $n$-type GaAs quantum wells
• Suppression of the D'yakonov-Perel' spin relaxation mechanism for all spin components in [111] zincblende quantum wells
• Kinetic theory of spin transport in n-typed semiconductor quantum wells
• Multi-subband effect in spin dephasing in semiconductor quantum wells
• Spin relaxation under identical Dresselhaus and Rashba coupling strengths in GaAs quantum wells
• Control of spin coherence in $n$-type GaAs quantum wells using strain
• Spin oscillations in transient diffusion of a spin pulse in n-type semiconductor quantum wells
• Diffusion and transport of spin pulses in an $n$-type semiconductor quantum well
• Manipulation of spin dephasing in InAs quantum wires

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• Anisotropic spin transport in GaAs quantum wells in the presence of competing Dresselhaus and Rashba spin-orbit-coupling strengths
• Spin relaxation due to the Bir-Aronov-Pikus mechanism in intrinsic and $p$-type GaAs quantum wells from a fully microscopic approach
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• Spin-orbit coupling in bulk GaAs
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• Kinetics of spin coherence of electrons in $n$-type InAs quantum wells under intense terahertz laser fields
• Kinetic investigation on extrinsic spin Hall effect induced by skew scattering
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• Non-Markovian hole spin kinetics in $p$-type GaAs quantum wells
• Hydrodynamic model for relaxation of optically injected currents in quantum wells
• Hole spin relaxation in [001] strained asymmetric Si/SiGe and Ge/SiGe quantum wells
• Electron spin relaxation in n-type InAs quantum wires
• Spin relaxation in $n$-type ZnO quantum wells
• Comment on "Density dependence of electron-spin polarization and relaxation in intrinsic GaAs at room temperature"
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