Spin transport and manipulation in semiconductors have been studied intensively with the ultimate goal of realizing spintronic devices. Previous work in GaAs has focused on controlling the carrier density, crystallographic orientation and dimensionality to limit the electron spin decoherence and allow transport over long distances. Here, we introduce a new method for the coherent transport of spin-polarized electronic wave packets using dynamic quantum dots (DQDs) created by the piezoelectric field of coherent acoustic phonons. Photogenerated spin carriers transported by the DQDs in undoped GaAs (001) quantum wells exhibit a spin coherence length exceeding 100 microm, which is attributed to the simultaneous control of the carrier density and the dimensionality by the DQDs during transport. In the absence of an applied magnetic field, we observe the precession of the electron spin induced by the internal magnetic field associated with the spin splitting of the conduction band (Dresselhaus term). The coherent manipulation of the precession frequency is also achieved by applying an external magnetic field.

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The optical properties of lattice-matched GaAsSb/InGaAs/InP heterostructures with a varying InGaAs layer thickness (0–900 Å) were investigated. These structures display strong low temperature type II luminescence, the energy of which varies with the InGaAs layer thickness and ranges from 0.453 to 0.63 eV. The type II luminescence was used to determine directly and accurately the conduction band offset of these structures. The values obtained herein are 0.36 and 0.18 eV at 4.2 K for the GaAsSb/InGaAs and GaAsSb/InP heterojunctions, respectively, with the GaAsSb conduction band higher in energy.

The interaction of strong surface acoustic wave ͑SAW͒ fields with the electronic band structure of GaAs quantum wells ͑QW's͒ is investigated using spatially resolved photoluminescence ͑PL͒ spectroscopy. The optical studies are accompanied by k•p and tight-binding ͑TB͒ calculations of the SAW effects on the electronic band structure. The SAW induces a time-dependent coupling between the heavy-͑hh͒ and light-hole ͑lh͒ states in the valence band of the QW's, which leads to an anticrossing of their energy levels for high SAW intensities. The coupling alters the strength and polarization of the optical transitions and can be reproduced by calculations of the optical transition matrix elements. Spatially resolved PL measurements of the SAW-induced ambipolar transport of electrons and holes provide evidence of a reduction of the transport efficiency for high SAW fields, which is attributed to a decrease of the hole mobility as the hh and lh levels approach each other. This conclusion is supported by TB calculations that show a significant enhancement of the heavy-hole effective mass under these conditions. In addition, the mobility may also be reduced by the squeezing of the wave functions towards the QW interfaces induced by strong piezoelectric fields, which makes the transport more sensitive to potential fluctuations induced by interface roughness and defects in the barrier layers.

We report high-resolution infrared absorption spectra of the neutral donors phosphorus and lithium, and the neutral acceptor boron, in isotopically pure 28Si crystals. Surprisingly, many of the transitions are much sharper than previously reported in natural Si. In particular, the 2p(0) line of phosphorus in 28Si has a full width at half maximum of only 4.2 microeV, about 5 times less than the narrowest 2p(0) line previously reported for natural Si, making it the narrowest shallow impurity transition yet observed. The widely held assumptions that the impurity transitions previously reported in high quality samples of natural Si revealed the true, homogeneous linewidths, are thus shown to be incorrect. The sharper transitions in 28Si also reveal new substructures in the boron and lithium spectra.