A virtual intersubband spin-flip spin-orbit coupling induced spin relaxation in GaAs (110) quantum wells

TL;DR

This paper proposes a new spin relaxation mechanism in symmetric GaAs (110) quantum wells involving second-order intersubband spin-orbit coupling and scattering, with calculations showing its significance under certain conditions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel spin relaxation mechanism based on second-order intersubband spin-orbit coupling and analyzes its impact in GaAs (110) quantum wells.

Findings

The mechanism significantly affects spin relaxation in high impurity density wells.

Spin relaxation time depends on electron density, temperature, and well width.

Theoretical calculations align with experimental conditions in symmetric GaAs (110) wells.

Abstract

A spin relaxation mechanism is proposed based on a second-order spin-flip intersubband spin-orbit coupling together with the spin-conserving scattering. The corresponding spin relaxation time is calculated via the Fermi golden rule. It is shown that this mechanism is important in symmetric GaAs (110) quantum wells with high impurity density. The dependences of the spin relaxation time on electron density, temperature and well width are studied with the underlying physics analyzed.