Hot-electron effect in spin dephasing in n-type GaAs quantum wells -: art. no. 245320

We perform a study of the effect of the high in-plane electric field on spin precession and spin dephasing due to the D'yakonov-Perel' mechanism in n-type GaAs (100) quantum wells by constructing and numerically solving kinetic Bloch equations. We self-consistently include all scattering such as electron/phonon,electron /nonmagnetic impurity as well as electron-electron Coulomb scattering in our theory and systematically investigate how the spin precession and spin dephasing are affected by the high electric field under various conditions. The hot-electron distribution functions and spin correlations are calculated rigorously in our theory. It is found that the D'yakonov-Perel' term in the electric field provides a nonvanishing effective magnetic field that alters the period of spin precession. Moreover, spin dephasing is markedly affected by the electric field. The important contribution of the electron-electron scattering to spin dephasing is also discussed.