Spin relaxation of two-dimensional electrons with a hierarchy of spin-orbit couplings

Abstract

The density matrix formalism is applied to calculate the spin-relaxation time for two-dimensional systems with a hierarchy of spin-orbit couplings, such as Rashba-type, Dresselhaus-type and so on. It is found that the spin-relaxation time can be infinite if those coupling strengths $\alpha$, $\beta$, ${\gamma }_1$ and ${\gamma }_2$ satisfy either condition (i) $\alpha =\beta ,{\gamma }_1=0$ or (ii) $\alpha =-\beta ,{\gamma }_2=0$, which correspond to the vanishing Yang-Mills "magnetic" field. The effect caused by the application of an external magnetic field is also discussed. It is found that the longitudinal and in-plane spin components can possess infinite life time when the spin components, the Larmor precession frequency and the external magnetic field satisfy certain relations.

arXiv commentRevtex, 7 pages, 3 figures

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Cited by in corpus (1)

• Spin dynamics of two-dimensional electrons with Rashba spin-orbit coupling and electron-electron interactions