Electron-electron Scattering in the Diffusive Regime and Dyakonov-Perel Theory: a case study of spin decoherence in n-type GaAs

TL;DR

This study clarifies that in n-type GaAs, electron-electron interactions influence spin decoherence indirectly via energy-dependent scattering mechanisms, aligning semiclassical Monte Carlo methods with first-principles approaches.

Contribution

It demonstrates that electron-electron scattering does not directly cause spin decoherence but affects it through other scattering mechanisms, reconciling different computational approaches.

Findings

Electron-electron scattering mainly influences spin decoherence indirectly.

Spin lifetime is affected by energy dependence of scattering mechanisms.

Bayesian analysis supports the proposed interpretation.

Abstract

We argue that in the ensemble Monte Carlo approach, the spin decoherence caused by electron-electron interactions in n-type bulk GaAs at room temperature, according to Dyakonov-Perel theory, is mainly induced by the electron density while electron-electron scattering itself does not directly affect spin lifetime but instead influences it through any energy dependence of other scattering mechanisms as typically expected in the case of the electron mobility. Therefore, our analysis, which is strongly supported by Bayesian Occam's razor, reconciles the semiclassical Monte Carlo approach with the novel computational first-principles tool recently proposed by Xu, Habib, Sundararaman and Ping.