Electron spin decoherence in diluted magnetic quantum wells

TL;DR

This paper investigates how electron spin coherence is affected by magnetic ion interactions and quantum well width fluctuations, revealing mechanisms that cause rapid spin decoherence and different decay regimes.

Contribution

It demonstrates the significant impact of quantum well width fluctuations on electron spin decoherence and characterizes homogeneous and inhomogeneous decay regimes.

Findings

Small width fluctuations greatly increase decoherence rate.

Homogeneous regime shows exponential short-time decay and power-law long-time tail.

Inhomogeneous regime exhibits quadratic exponential decay.

Abstract

We study electron spin dynamics in diluted magnetic quantum wells. The electrons are coupled by exchange interaction with randomly distributed magnetic ions polarized by magnetic field. This coupling leads to both spin relaxation and spin decoherence. We demonstrate that even very small spatial fluctuations of quantum well width dramatically increase rate of decoherence. Depending on the strength of exchange interaction and the amplitude of the fluctuations the decoherence can be homogeneous or inhomogeneous. In the homogeneous regime, the transverse (with respect to magnetic field) component of the electron spin decays on the short time scale exponentialy, while the long-time spin dynamics is non-exponential demonstrating long-lived power law tail. In the inhomogeneous case, the transverse spin component decays exponentially with the exponent quadratic in time.