Spin relaxation in $n$-type GaAs quantum wells from a full microscopic approach

TL;DR

This paper presents a comprehensive microscopic study of spin relaxation in n-type GaAs quantum wells across a wide temperature range, accurately matching experimental data and revealing the effects of various scattering mechanisms.

Contribution

The study provides a full microscopic calculation of spin relaxation times considering all relevant scattering processes, aligning well with experimental results and exploring temperature-dependent behaviors.

Findings

Good agreement with experimental spin relaxation times from 20 K to 300 K.

Identification of a Coulomb scattering-induced peak in spin relaxation at low temperatures.

Prediction of different hot-electron spin kinetics at low versus high temperatures.

Abstract

We perform a full microscopic investigation on the spin relaxation in $n$-type (001) GaAs quantum wells with Al$_{0.4}$Ga$_{0.6}$As barrier due to the D'yakonov-perel' mechanism from nearly 20 K to the room temperature by constructing and numerically solving the kinetic spin Bloch equations. We consider all the relevant scattering such as the electron--acoustic-phonon, the electron--longitudinal-optical-phonon, the electron--nonmagnetic-impurity and the electron-electron Coulomb scattering to the spin relaxation. The spin relaxation times calculated from our theory with a fitting spin splitting parameter are in good agreement with the experimental data by Ohno {\em et al.} [Physica E {\bf 6}, 817 (2000)] over the whole temperature regime (from 20 K to 300 K). The value of the fitted spin splitting parameter agrees with many experiments and theoretical calculations. We further show the temperature dependence of the spin relaxation time under various conditions such as electron density, impurity density and well width. We predict a peak solely due to the Coulomb scattering in the spin relaxation time at low temperature ($<50$ K) in samples with low electron density ({\em e.g.}, density less than $1 \times 10^{11}$ cm$^{-2}$) but high mobility. This peak disappears in samples with high electron density ({\em e.g.} $2 \times 10^{11}$ cm$^{-2}$) and/or low mobility. The hot-electron spin kinetics at low temperature is also addressed with many features quite different from the high temperature case predicted.