Hot-electron effect in spin dephasing in $n$-type GaAs quantum wells

TL;DR

This study investigates how high in-plane electric fields influence spin precession and dephasing in n-type GaAs quantum wells, revealing the role of hot-electron effects and electron-electron scattering in spin dynamics.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive numerical analysis of spin dephasing under electric fields, including all relevant scattering mechanisms, which was not thoroughly explored before.

Findings

Electric field induces a non-zero effective magnetic field affecting spin precession.

Spin dephasing is significantly altered by the electric field.

Electron-electron scattering plays an important role in spin dephasing.

Abstract

We perform a study of the effect of the high in-plane electric field on the spin precession and spin dephasing due to the D'yakonov-Perel' mechanism in $n$-type GaAs (100) quantum wells by constructing and numerically solving the kinetic Bloch equations. We self-consistently include all of the scattering such as electron-phonon, electron-non-magnetic impurity as well as the electron-electron Coulomb scattering in our theory and systematically investigate how the spin precession and spin dephasing are affected by the high electric field under various conditions. The hot-electron distribution functions and the spin correlations are calculated rigorously in our theory. It is found that the D'yakonov-Perel' term in the electric field provides a non-vanishing effective magnetic field that alters the spin precession period. Moreover, spin dephasing is markedly affected by the electric field. The important contribution of the electron-electron scattering to the spin dephasing is also discussed.