2004/01/31 by Charles Tahan, Robert Joynt · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism #Quantum and electron transport phenomena #Semiconductor Quantum Structures and Devices #cond-mat.mes-hall #cond-mat.mtrl-sci
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevb.71.075315
Extended derivations and info, fixed typos and refs, updated figs and data. Worth a re-download
arxiv created 2004/07/27 · openalex publication_date 2005/02/18 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Silicon is a leading candidate material for spin-based devices, and two-dimensional electron gases (2DEGs) formed in silicon heterostructures have been proposed for both spin transport and quantum dot quantum computing applications. The key parameter for these applications is the spin relaxation time. Here we apply the theory of D'yakonov and Perel' (DP) to calculate the electron spin resonance linewidth of a silicon 2DEG due to structural inversion asymmetry for arbitrary static magnetic field direction at low temperatures. We estimate the Rashba spin-orbit coupling coefficient in silicon quantum wells and find the T1 and T2 times of the spins from this mechanism as a function of momentum scattering time, magnetic field, and device-specific parameters. We obtain agreement with existing data for the angular dependence of the relaxation times and show that the magnitudes are consistent with the DP mechanism. We suggest how to increase the relaxation times by appropriate device design.