Hole spin relaxation in p-type GaAs quantum wires investigated by numerically solving fully microscopic kinetic spin Bloch equations

We investigate the spin relaxation of p-type GaAs quantum wires by numerically solving the fully microscopic kinetic spin Bloch equations. We find that the quantum-wire size influences the spin-relaxation time effectively by modulating the energy spectrum and the heavy-hole-light-hole mixing of wire states. The effects of quantum-wire size, temperature, hole density, and initial polarization are investigated in detail. We show that, depending on the situation, the spin-relaxation time can either increase or decrease with hole density. Due to the different subband structure and effects arising from spin-orbit coupling, many spin-relaxation properties are quite different from those of holes in the bulk or in quantum wells, and the intersubband scattering makes a marked contribution to the spin relaxation.