Spin sensitive bleaching and monopolar spin orientation in quantum wells

The initialization of spin polarization in localized hole states is investigated using time-resolved Kerr rotation. We find that the sign of the polarization depends on the magnetic field, and the power and the wavelength of the circularly polarized pump pulse. An analysis of the spin dynamics and the spin-initialization process shows that two mechanisms are responsible for spin polarization with opposite sign: The difference of the g factor between the localized holes and th...

Spin transport of indirect excitons in GaAs/AlGaAs coupled quantum wells was observed by measuring the spatially resolved circular polarization of the exciton emission. The exciton spin transport originates from the long spin relaxation time and long lifetime of the indirect excitons.

We demonstrate negative polarization created by light-hole exciton excitation in g-factor engineered GaAs quantum wells measured by time-resolved Kerr rotation and polarization-resolved photoluminescence. This negative polarization is a result of polarization transfer from a photon to an electron spin mediated by a light hole. This demonstration is an important step towards achieving quantum media conversion from a photonic qubit to an electron spin qubit required for buildin...

A comparison is made between the degree of spin polarization of electrons excited by one- and two-photon absorption of circularly polarized light in bulk zincblende semiconductors. Time- and polarization-resolved experiments in (001)-oriented GaAs reveal an initial degree of spin polarization of 49% for both one- and two-photon spin injection at wavelengths of 775 and 1550 nm, in agreement with theory. The macroscopic symmetry and microscopic theory for two-photon spin inject...

Optical spin orientation and depolarization phenomena in semiconductors are of overwhelming importance for the development of spin-optoelectronics. In this paper we employ Ge-based spin-photodiodes to investigate the room temperature spectral dependence of optical spin orientation in Germanium, in the range 400-1550 nm, and the photo-carrier spin relaxation phenomena. Apart from the maximum in the spin polarization of photo-carriers for photon energy resonant with the direct ...

We report on the magneto-gyrotropic photogalvanic effect (MPGE) in n-doped (110)-grown GaAs/AlGaAs quantum-well (QW) structures caused by free-carrier absorption of terahertz radiation in the presence of a magnetic field. The photocurrent behavior upon variation of the radiation polarization state, magnetic field orientation and temperature is studied. The developed theory of MPGE describes well all experimental results. It is demonstrated that the structure inversion asymmet...

We report on experiments in which a spin-polarized current is injected from a $GaMnAs$ ferromagnetic electrode into a $GaAs$ quantum well through an AlAs barrier. The resulting spin polarization in the GaAs well is detected by measuring how the current, tunneling to a second $GaMnAs$ ferromagnetic electrode, depends on the orientation of its magnetization. Our results can be accounted for the non-relaxed spin splitting of the chemical potential, that is spin accumulation, in ...

Hole spin relaxation in $p$-type (111) GaAs quantum wells is investigated in the case with only the lowest hole subband, which is heavy-hole like in (111) GaAs/AlAs and light-hole like in (111) GaAs/InP quantum wells, being relevant. The subband L\"{o}wdin perturbation method is applied to obtain the effective Hamiltonian including the Dresselhaus and Rashba spin-orbit couplings. Under a proper gate voltage, the total in-plane effective magnetic field in (111) GaAs/AlAs quant...

Photoluminescence (PL) and highly circularly-polarized magneto-PL (up to 50% at 6 T) from two-step bandgap InAs/InGaAs/InAlAs quantum wells (QWs) are studied. Bright PL is observed up to room temperature, indicating a high quantum efficiency of the radiative recombination in these QW. The sign of the circular polarization indicates that it stems from the spin polarization of heavy holes caused by the Zeeman effect. Although in magnetic field the PL line are strongly circularl...

As is well known the absorption of circularly polarized light in semiconductors results in optical orientation of electron spins and helicity-dependent electric photocurrent, and the absorption of linearly polarized light is accompanied by optical alignment of electron momenta. Here we show that the absorption of unpolarized light in a quantum well (QW) leads to generation of a pure spin current, although both the average electron spin and electric current are vanishing.