Hole spin relaxation in Ge quantum dots

Hole spin relaxation in an isolated Ge quantum dot due to interaction with phonons is investigated. Spin relaxation in this case occurs through the mechanism of the modulation of the spin-orbit interaction by lattice vibrations. According to the calculations performed, the spin relaxation time due to direct single-phonon processes for the hole ground state equals 1.4 ms in the magnetic field H = 1 T at the temperature T = 4 K. The dependence of the relaxation time on the magnetic field is described by the power function H^?5. At higher temperatures, a substantial contribution to spin relaxation is made by two-phonon (Raman) processes. Because of this, the spin relaxation time decreases to nanoseconds as the temperature is raised to T = 20 K. Analysis of transition probabilities shows that the third and twelfth excited hole states, which are intermediate in two-step relaxation processes, play the main part in Raman processes.     

Anisotropy of spin splitting and spin relaxation in lateral quantum dots

Inelastic spin relaxation and spin splitting epsilon(s) in lateral quantum dots are studied in the regime of strong in-plane magnetic field. Because of both the g-factor energy dependence and spin-orbit coupling, epsilon(s) demonstrates a substantial nonlinear magnetic field dependence similar to that observed by Hanson et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 196802 (2003)]. It also varies with the in-plane orientation of the magnetic field due to crystalline anisotropy of the spin-orbit coupling. The spin relaxation rate is also anisotropic, the anisotropy increasing with the field. When the magnetic length is less than the "thickness" of the GaAs dot, the relaxation can be an order of magnitude faster for B ||[100] than for B || [110].     

Knight-field-enabled nuclear spin polarization in single quantum dots

We demonstrate dynamical nuclear-spin polarization in the absence of an external magnetic field by resonant circularly polarized optical excitation of a single electron or hole charged quantum dot. Optical pumping of the electron spin induces an effective inhomogeneous magnetic (Knight) field that determines the direction along which nuclear spins could polarize and enables nuclear-spin cooling by suppressing depolarization induced by nuclear dipole-dipole interactions. Our experiments constitute a first step towards a quantum measurement of the Overhauser field.     

Theory of phonon-induced spin relaxation in laterally coupled quantum dots

Phonon-induced spin relaxation in coupled lateral quantum dots in the presence of spin-orbit coupling is calculated. The calculation for single dots is consistent with experiment. Spin relaxation in double dots at useful interdot couplings is dominated by spin-hot spots that are strongly anisotropic. Spin-hot spots are ineffective for a diagonal crystallographic orientation of the dots with a transverse in-plane field. This geometry is proposed for spin-based quantum information processing.     

Field dependence of the electron spin relaxation in quantum dots

The interaction of the electron spin with local elastic twists due to transverse phonons is studied. The universal dependence of the spin-relaxation rate on the strength and direction of the magnetic field is obtained in terms of the electron gyromagnetic tensor and macroscopic elastic constants of the solid. The theory contains no unknown parameters and it can be easily tested in experiment. At high magnetic field it provides a parameter-free lower bound on the electron spin relaxation in quantum dots.     

Effects of Coulomb interactions on spin states in vertical semiconductor quantum dots

The effects of direct Coulomb and exchange interactions on spin states are studied for quantum dots contained in circular and rectangular mesas. For a circular mesa a spin-triplet favored by these interactions is observed at zero and nonzero magnetic fields. We tune and measure the relative strengths of these interactions as a function of the number of confined electrons. We find that electrons tend to have parallel spins when they occupy nearly degenerate single-particle states. We use a magnetic field to adjust the single-particle state degeneracy, and find that the spin-configurations in an arbitrary magnetic field are well explained in terms of two-electron singlet and triplet states. For a rectangular mesa we observe no signatures of the spin-triplet at zero magnetic field. Due to the anisotropy in the lateral confinement single-particle state degeneracy present in the circular mesa is lifted, and Coulomb interactions become weak. We evaluate the degree of the anisotropy by measuring the magnetic field dependence of the energy spectrum for the ground and excited states, and find that at zero magnetic field the spin-singlet is more significantly favored by the lifting of level degeneracy than by the reduction in the Coulomb interaction. We also find that the spin-triplet is recovered by adjusting the level degeneracy with magnetic field. Received: 14 April 2000 / Accepted: 17 April 2000 / Published online: 6 September 2000     

Electron–phonon-induced spin relaxation in InAs quantum dots

We have calculated spin-relaxation rates in parabolic quantum dots due to the phonon modulation of the spin–orbit interaction in the presence of an external magnetic field. Both deformation potential and piezoelectric electron–phonon coupling mechanisms are included within the Pavlov–Firsov spin–phonon Hamiltonian. Our results have demonstrated that, in narrow gap materials, the electron–phonon deformation potential and piezoelectric coupling give comparable contributions to spin-relaxation processes. For large dots, the deformation potential interaction becomes dominant. This behavior is not observed in wide or intermediate gap semiconductors, where the piezoelectric coupling, in general, governs the spin-relaxation processes. We have also demonstrated that spin-relaxation rates are particularly sensitive to the Landé g-factor.     

Coulomb effects in semiconductor quantum dots

This paper presents a new model for the Internet graph (AS graph) based on the concept of heuristic trade-off optimization, introduced by Fabrikant, Koutsoupias and Papadimitriou in [5] to grow a random tree with a heavily tailed degree distribution. We propose here a generalization of this approach to generate a general graph, as a candidate for modeling the Internet. We present the results of our simulations and an analysis of the standard parameters measured in our model, compared with measurements from the physical Internet graph.Received: 9 February 2004, Published online: 14 May 2004PACS: 89.75.-k Complex systems - 89.75.Hc Networks and genealogical trees - 89.75.Da Systems obeying scaling laws - 89.75.Fb Structures and organization in complex systems - 89.65.Gh Economics; econophysics, financial markets, business and managementLRI: http: //www.lri.fr/~ihameli; CNRS, LIP, ENS Lyon : http: //www.ens-lyon.fr/~nschaban     

Coulomb blockade in molecular quantum dots

The rate-equation approach is used to describe sequential tunneling through a molecular junction in the Coulomb blockade regime. Such device is composed of molecular quantum dot (with discrete energy levels) coupled with two metallic electrodes via potential barriers. Based on this model, we calculate nonlinear transport characteristics (conductance-voltage and current-voltage dependences) and compare them with the results obtained within a self-consistent field approach. It is shown that the shape of transport characteristics is determined by the combined effect of the electronic structure of molecular quantum dots and by the Coulomb blockade. In particular, the following phenomena are discussed in detail: the suppression of the current at higher voltages, the charging-induced rectification effect, the charging-generated changes of conductance gap and the temperature-induced as well as broadening-generated smoothing of current steps.     

Role of orbital dynamics in spin relaxation and weak antilocalization in quantum dots

We develop a semiclassical theory for spin-dependent quantum transport to describe weak (anti)localization in quantum dots with spin-orbit coupling. This allows us to distinguish different types of spin relaxation in systems with chaotic, regular, and diffusive orbital classical dynamics. We find, in particular, that for typical Rashba spin-orbit coupling strengths, integrable ballistic systems can exhibit weak localization, while corresponding chaotic systems show weak antilocalization. We further calculate the magnetoconductance and analyze how the weak antilocalization is suppressed with decreasing quantum dot size and increasing additional in-plane magnetic field.     

Weak Coulomb blockade effect in quantum dots

We develop the general nonequilibrium theory of transport through a quantum dot, including Coulomb blockade effects via a 1/N expansion, where N is the number of scattering channels. At lowest order we recover the Landauer formula for the current plus a self-consistent equation for the dot potential. We obtain the leading corrections and compare with earlier approaches. Finally, we show that to leading and to next leading order in 1/N there is no interaction correction to the weak localization, in contrast to previous theories, but consistent with experiments by Huibers et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 81, 1917 (1998)], where N=4.     

Direct observation of the electron spin relaxation induced by nuclei in quantum dots

We have studied the electron spin relaxation in semiconductor InAs/GaAs quantum dots by time-resolved optical spectroscopy. The average spin polarization of the electrons in an ensemble of p-doped quantum dots decays down to 1/3 of its initial value with a characteristic time T(Delta) approximately 500 ps, which is attributed to the hyperfine interaction with randomly oriented nuclear spins. We show that this efficient electron spin relaxation mechanism can be suppressed by an external magnetic field as small as 100 mT.     

Geometrical spin dephasing in quantum dots

We study spin-orbit mediated relaxation and dephasing of electron spins in quantum dots. We show that higher order contributions provide a relaxation mechanism that dominates for low magnetic fields and is of geometrical origin. In the low-field limit relaxation is dominated by coupling to electron-hole excitations and possibly 1/f noise rather than phonons.     

Electrical control of hole spin relaxation in charge tunable InAs/GaAs quantum dots

We report on optical orientation of singly charged excitons (trions) in charge-tunable self-assembled InAs/GaAs quantum dots. When the charge varies from 0 to -2, the trion photoluminescence of a single quantum dot shows up and under quasiresonant excitation gets progressively polarized from zero to approximately 100%. This behavior is interpreted as the electric control of the trion thermalization process, which subsequently acts on the hole-spin relaxation driven in nanosecond time scale by the anisotropic electron-hole exchange. This is supported by the excitation spectroscopy and time-resolved measurements of a quantum dot ensemble.     

Coulomb blockade in triangular lateral small-size quantum dots

An AlGaAs/GaAs lateral quantum dot of triangular shape with a characteristic size L<100 nm containing less than ten electrons was studied. Single-electron oscillations of the conductance G of this dot were measured at G<e²/h. When going from Ge²/h to G≈0.5e²/h, a decrease was found not only in the amplitude but also in the period of the oscillations. A calculation of the 3D-electrostatics demonstrated that this effect is due to a change in the dot size produced by control voltages.     

Charge and spin configurations in the coupled quantum dots with Coulomb correlations induced by tunneling current

We investigated the peculiarities of non-equilibrium charge states and spin configurations in the system of two strongly coupled quantum dots (QDs) weakly connected to the electrodes in the presence of Coulomb correlations. We analyzed the modification of non-equilibrium charge states and different spin configurations of the system in a wide range of applied bias voltage and revealed well pronounced ranges of system parameters where negative tunneling conductivity appears due to the Coulomb correlations.     

Enhancement of the Coulomb correlations in type-II quantum dots

We report on calculation of binding energies of excitons as well as positively and negatively charged excitons and biexcitons in type-II quantum dots. The shape of the GaSb/GaAs quantum dot is assumed lens-like and the energies are calculated within the Hartree–Fock approximation. A large enhancement of the binding energies has been estimated in comparison with the type-I quantum dots (InAs/GaAs) which is in good agreement with the recent experimental findings.     

Nuclear spin switch in semiconductor quantum dots

We show that by illuminating an InGaAs/GaAs self-assembled quantum dot with circularly polarized light, the nuclei of atoms constituting the dot can be driven into a bistable regime, in which either a thresholdlike enhancement or reduction of the local nuclear field by up to 3 T can be generated by varying the pumping intensity. The excitation power threshold for such a nuclear spin "switch" is found to depend on both the external magnetic and electric fields. The switch is shown to arise from the strong feedback of the nuclear spin polarization on the dynamics of the spin transfer from electrons to the nuclei of the dot.     

Single-electron tunneling and Coulomb blockade in carbon-based quantum dots

Single-electron tunneling (SET) and Coulomb blockade (CB) phenomena have been widely observed in nanoscaled electronics and have received intense attention around the world. In the past few years, we have studied SET in carbon nanotube fragments and fullerenes by applying the so-called “Orthodox” theory [28]. As outlined in this review article, we investigated the single-electron charging and discharging process via current-voltage characteristics, gate effect, and electronic structure-related factors. Because the investigated geometric structures are three-dimensionally confined, resulting in a discrete spectrum of energy levels resembling the property of quantum dots, we evidenced the CB and Coulomb staircases in these structures. These nanostructures are sufficiently small that introducing even a single electron is sufficient to dramatically change the transport properties as a result of the charging energy associated with this extra electron. We found that the Coulomb staircases occur in the I–V characteristics only when the width of the left barrier junction is smaller than that of the right barrier junction. In this case, the transmission coefficient of the emitter junction is larger than that of the collector junction; also, occupied levels enter the bias window, thereby enhancing the tunneling extensively.