Electron and hole spins in quantum dots

As the technology underlying modern electronics advances, it is unlikely that previous rates of power use and computational speed improvement can be maintained. Devices using the spin of an electron or hole, "spintronic" systems, can begin to address these problems, creating new devices which can be used as a continuation and augmentation of existing electronic systems. In addition, spintronic devices could make special use of coherent quantum states, making it feasible to address certain problems which are computationally intractable using classical electronic components. Unlike higher-dimensional nanostructures such as quantum wires and wells, quantum dots allow a single electron or hole to be confined to the dot. Through the spin-orbit effect, the electron and hole g-tensor can be influenced by quantum dot shape and applied electric fields, leading to the possibility of gating a single quantum dot and using a single electron or hole spin for quantum information storage or manipulation.

In this thesis, the spin of electrons and holes in isolated semiconductor quantum dots are investigated in the presence of electric and magnetic fields using realspace numerical 8-band strain-dependent k · p theory. The calculations of electron and hole g-tensors are then used to predict excitonic g-tensors as a function of electric field. These excitonic g-factors are then compared against existing experimental work, and show that in-plane excitonic g-factor dependence on electric field is dominated by the hole g-factor. The dependence of the electron and hole g-tensors on the applied electric field are then used to propose a class of novel quantum dot devices which manipulate the electron or hole spins in either a resonant or a non-resonant mode. Because of the highly parabolic dependence of some components of the hole g-tensor on the applied electric field, a shift in the Larmor frequency and an additional resonance are predicted, with additional shifts and resonances occurring for higher-order dependencies. Spin manipulation times down to 3.9ns for electrons and 180ps for holes are reported using these methods.