Spin relaxation in $n$-type (111) GaAs quantum wells

TL;DR

This paper studies spin relaxation in n-type (111) GaAs quantum wells, revealing how spin-orbit coupling cancellation can suppress relaxation and produce distinctive density and temperature dependence features.

Contribution

It demonstrates the suppression of spin relaxation via spin-orbit coupling cancellation and explores the resulting complex dependence on density, temperature, impurities, and polarization direction.

Findings

Cancellation of spin-orbit fields suppresses in-plane spin relaxation.

Presence of a cancellation peak in density and temperature dependence.

Impurities influence the prominence of the cancellation and Coulomb peaks.

Abstract

We investigate the spin relaxation limited by the D'yakonov-Perel' mechanism in $n$-type (111) GaAs quantum wells, by means of the kinetic spin Bloch equation approach. In (111) GaAs quantum wells, the in-plane effective magnetic field from the D'yakonov-Perel' term can be suppressed to zero on a special momentum circle under the proper gate voltage, by the cancellation between the Dresselhaus and Rashba spin-orbit coupling terms. When the spin-polarized electrons mainly distribute around this special circle, the in-plane inhomogeneous broadening is small and the spin relaxation can be suppressed, especially for that along the growth direction of quantum well. This cancellation effect may cause a peak (the cancellation peak) in the density or temperature dependence of the spin relaxation time. In the density (temperature) dependence, the interplay between the cancellation peak and the ordinary density (Coulomb) peak leads to rich features of the density (temperature) dependence of the spin relaxation time. The effect of impurities, with its different weights on the cancellation peak and the Coulomb peak in the temperature dependence of the spin relaxation, is revealed. We also show the anisotropy of the spin relaxation with respect to the spin-polarization direction.