We present a comprehensive study of the low-field magnetoresistance in carbon doped p-type GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructures aiming at the investigation of spin-orbit interaction effects. The following signatures of exceptionally strong spin-orbit interactions are simultaneously observed: a beating in the Shubnikov-de Haas oscillations, a classical positive magnetoresistance due to the presence of the two spin-split subbands, and a weak anti-localization dip in the magnetoresistance. The spin-orbit induced splitting of the heavy hole subband at the Fermi level is determined to be around 30% of the total Fermi energy. The phase coherence length of holes of around 2.5 μm at a temperature of 70 mK, extracted from weak anti-localization measurements, is promissing for the fabrication of phase-coherent p-type nanodevices.
@article{arxiv.0711.0492,
title = {Strong spin-orbit interactions and weak antilocalization in carbon doped p-type GaAs heterostructures},
author = {Boris Grbic and Renaud Leturcq and Thomas Ihn and Klaus Ensslin and Dirk Reuter and Andreas D. Wieck},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0711.0492},
year = {2008}
}