English

Spin- and energy relaxation of hot electrons at GaAs surfaces

Materials Science 2015-06-25 v2

Abstract

The mechanisms for spin relaxation in semiconductors are reviewed, and the mechanism prevalent in p-doped semiconductors, namely spin relaxation due to the electron-hole exchange interaction, is presented in some depth. It is shown that the solution of Boltzmann-type kinetic equations allows one to obtain quantitative results for spin relaxation in semiconductors that go beyond the original Bir-Aronov-Pikus relaxation-rate approximation. Experimental results using surface sensitive two-photon photoemission techniques show that the spin relaxation-time of electrons in p-doped GaAs at a semiconductor/metal surface is several times longer than the corresponding bulk spin relaxation-times. A theoretical explanation of these results in terms of the reduced density of holes in the band-bending region at the surface is presented.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0504028,
  title  = {Spin- and energy relaxation of hot electrons at GaAs surfaces},
  author = {T. Ohms and K. Hiebbner and H. C. Schneider and M. Aeschlimann},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0504028},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

33 pages, 12 figures; earlier submission replaced by corrected and expanded version; eps figures now included in the text