Coherent phonon detection gated by transient spin-polarized electrons

Lagoudakis, Pavlos (2021) Coherent phonon detection gated by transient spin-polarized electrons. Physical Review B, 103 (24), [L241201]. (doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.103.L241201).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Manipulating electron spins on ultrashort timescales shows promise in the field of data processing. Because of the direct electron-photon coupling, photons have been widely used for such studies, but not phonons. Here we tie coherent phonon detection to transient spin populations. We optically excite gigahertz picosecond phonon wave packets in a metal-coated GaAs slab containing GaAs/Al0.4Ga0.6As multiple quantum wells on the opposite side. Before the phonon wave-packet arrival, circularly polarized light induces a transient spin polarization. Phonon-induced ultrafast polarization rotation and reflectivity changes contingent on the transient spin population are detected by a heterodyne modulation technique. With an analytical model, we posit the presence of significant second-order interactions, enabled by spins, in the coherent-phonon optical detection. Applications include transient spin population monitoring and novel spintronic nanodevices.

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More information

Accepted/In Press date: 14 May 2021

Published date: 1 June 2021

Additional Information: Funding Information: We thank D. Schuh, T. Korn, Ch. Schüller, and M. Henini for samples, and J.- W. Kim, A. V. Scherbakov, and E. Perrone for valuable discussions. We acknowledge Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), Japan. This work has also been supported by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Grant No. EP/M025330/1 on Hybrid Polaritonics. Publisher Copyright: © 2021 American Physical Society.