Effect of dilute nitride GaNAs quantum well thickness on spin amplification dynamics of tunnel-coupled InAs quantum dots

Abstract

Electron spin dynamics of dilute nitride GaNAs quantum well (QW)-InAs quantum dots (QDs) tunnel-coupled structures having different QW thicknesses were studied via circularly polarized time-resolved photoluminescence. The rate equation fitting considering a capture of QD electron spins by the GaNAs localized states via tunnel transfer revealed that the spin amplification dynamics of the QDs depended on the QW thickness. For the QW thickness of 5 nm, although the temporal amplification of QD electron spin polarization was slow owing to the weak wavefunction coupling between the QW and QD, the long duration of high electron spin polarization was observed because of the suppressed capture of QD majority spins relative to the efficient removal of QD minority spins. When the QW thickness increased from 5 to 20 nm, the strong spin filtering in GaNAs and strong wavefunction coupling led to the fast amplification of QD electron spin polarization with high initial spin polarization. However, the spin polarization rapidly decays after the amplification owing to the removal of both QD majority and minority spins, originating from many effective localized states. These results indicate that the time-dependent QD electron spin polarization and the resultant spin amplification can be widely tuned by changing the thickness of the tunnel-coupled GaNAs QW.