Magnetic field effects on spin relaxation in heterostructures

TL;DR

This paper theoretically investigates how magnetic fields influence electron spin relaxation in quantum wells, revealing conditions where magnetic effects suppress or compensate spin relaxation, and applying findings to experimental data.

Contribution

It derives a comprehensive tensor for spin relaxation rates considering arbitrary magnetic field directions and material contributions, advancing understanding of spin dynamics in heterostructures.

Findings

Magnetic fields can suppress or compensate spin relaxation effects.

Derived a general tensor for spin relaxation rates in quantum wells.

Applied theory to experimental ESR data to estimate spin splitting.

Abstract

Effect of magnetic field on electron spin relaxation in quantum wells is studied theoretically. We have shown that Larmor effect and cyclotron motion of carriers can either jointly suppress D'yakonov-Perel' spin relaxation or compensate each other. The spin relaxation rates tensor is derived for any given direction of the external field and arbitrary ratio of bulk and structural contributions to spin splitting. Our results are applied to the experiments on electron spin resonance in SiGe heterostructures, and enable us to extract spin splitting value for such quantum wells.