Pseudospin-electric coupling for holes beyond the envelope-function approximation

TL;DR

This paper investigates a previously neglected local electric-field coupling of hole pseudospin states in semiconductors, calculating its strength and implications for spin-related phenomena beyond the envelope-function approximation.

Contribution

It introduces a first-principles calculation of pseudospin-electric coupling for holes, revealing significant transition dipoles and deriving related spin-orbit effects in quantum wells.

Findings

Transition dipole of 0.5 debye for holes in GaAs.

Derived Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling from this transition dipole.

Implications for spin splitting, coherence, and spin-electric effects in quantum systems.

Abstract

In the envelope-function approximation, interband transitions produced by electric fields are neglected. However, electric fields may lead to a spatially local ($k$-independent) coupling of band (internal, pseudospin) degrees of freedom. Such a coupling exists between heavy-hole and light-hole (pseudo-)spin states for holes in III-V semiconductors, such as GaAs, or in group IV semiconductors (germanium, silicon, ...) with broken inversion symmetry. Here, we calculate the electric-dipole (pseudospin-electric) coupling for holes in GaAs from first principles. We find a transition dipole of $0.5$ debye, a significant fraction of that for the hydrogen-atom $1s\to2p$ transition. In addition, we derive the Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling that is generated by this transition dipole for heavy holes in a triangular quantum well. A quantitative microscopic description of this pseudospin-electric coupling may be important for understanding the origin of spin splitting in quantum wells, spin coherence/relaxation ($T_2^*/T_1$) times, spin-electric coupling for cavity-QED, electric-dipole spin resonance, and spin non-conserving tunneling in double quantum dot systems.