Dresden 2014 – wissenschaftliches Programm
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TT: Fachverband Tiefe Temperaturen
TT 90: Spintronics II (organized by HL)
TT 90.8: Vortrag
Donnerstag, 3. April 2014, 11:45–12:00, POT 151
Spin polarization of electron states in GaAs quantum wells — •Pavel Streda — Institute of Physics ASCR, Praha, Czech Republic
The standard method to establish the spin orientation of electron states, for zinc-blende semiconductors like GaAs, is based on the effective medium approach represented by the Luttinger Hamiltonian. For a two-dimensional electron gas, confined within a potential well, the real eigenfunctions of bound states across the well has been approximated by an envelope function. It leads to the conclusion that along main crystallographic axis, [1, 0 ,0] and [0 ,1,0], the spin orientation is parallel or antiparallel with velocity directions. This contradicts to the tendency of the spin to be perpendicular to the velocity direction, observed in bulk structures.
The question arises if an envelope function approach, which suppresses the effect of local environment, is not too crude approach for real quantum wells, which are usually wider than ten lattice constants. To answer this question the empirical pseudopotential method has been used to establish energy dispersions and spin expectation values for two-dimensional electron gas confined within quantum wells of the different width. In all cases the tendency of the spin to be perpendicular to the velocity direction has been observed. For wide enough wells the obtained spin structure approaches that given by the bulk GaAs crystal with kz=0.