Longitudinal spin relaxation of donor-bound electrons in direct band-gap semiconductors

作者：Linpeng Xiayu; Karin Todd; Durnev M V; Barbour Russell; Glazov M M; Sherman E Ya; Watkins S P; Seto Satoru; Fu Kai Mei C

来源：Physical Review B, 2016, 94(12): 125401.

DOI：10.1103/PhysRevB.94.125401

We measure the donor-bound electron longitudinal spin-relaxation time (T-1) as a function of magnetic field (B) in three high-purity direct band-gap semiconductors: GaAs, InP, and CdTe, observing a maximum T-1 of 1.4, 0.4, and 1.2 ms, respectively. In GaAs and InP at low magnetic field, up to similar to 2 T, the spin-relaxation mechanism is strongly density and temperature dependent and is attributed to the random precession of the electron spin in hyperfine fields caused by the lattice nuclear spins. In all three semiconductors at high magnetic field, we observe a power-law dependence T-1 alpha B-nu with 3 less than or similar to nu less than or similar to 4. Our theory predicts that the direct spin-phonon interaction is important in all three materials in this regime in contrast to quantum dot structures. In addition, the "admixture" mechanism caused by Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling combined with single-phonon processes has a comparable contribution in GaAs. We find excellent agreement between high-field theory and experiment for GaAs and CdTe with no free parameters, however a significant discrepancy exists for InP.

• 出版日期2016-9-1