Device concepts in semiconductor spintronics make long spin lifetimes desirable, and the requirements put on spin control by schemes of quantum information processing are even more demanding. Unfortunately, due to spin-orbit coupling electron spins in semiconductors are generically subject to rather fast decoherence. In two-dimensional quantum wells made of zinc-blende semiconductors, however, ...

The crystal structure o f LiZnAs has been veri­ fied with single crystal X-ray methods. LiZnAs crystallizes in a filled-up zinc blende type o f struc­ ture (F 43w , a = 593.9(1) pm, As at site 4 a (000); Zn at site 4 d (3/4 3/4 3/4); Li at site 4c (1/4 1/4 1/4); 25 hkl; R = 0.018). As is coordinated by 4 Li and 4 Zn atoms with identical distances of 257.2(1) pm. Li and Zn atoms are tetrahedrall...

We study the effect of impurities in inducing spin-orbit coupling in graphene. We show that the sp3 distortion induced by an impurity can lead to a large increase in the spin-orbit coupling with a value comparable to the one found in diamond and other zinc-blende semiconductors. The spin-flip scattering produced by the impurity leads to spin scattering lengths of the order found in recent exper...

With a view towards studying the effect of lowering the dimensionality on excitons, we have first investigated the excitonic effects in bulk CuBr, which is a direct band-gap semiconductor with zinc blende structure. We have employed time-dependent density functional theory for this investigation. Both, the random phase approximation and the bootstrap approximation, for the exchange-correlation ...

It is shown that absorption of circularly polarized infrared radiation achieved by inter-subband and intra-subband (Drude-like) transitions results in a monopolar spin orientation of free carriers. The monopolar spin polarization in zinc-blende-based quantum wells (QWs) is demonstrated by the observation of the spin-galvanic and circular photogalvanic effects. It is shown that monopolar spin or...

Correlation effects on the electronic structure of half-metallic CrAs in zinc-blende structure are studied for different substrate lattice constants. Depending on the substrate the spectral weight of the non-quasiparticle states might be tuned from a well developed value in the case of InAs substrate to an almost negligible contribution for the GaAs one. A piezoelectric material that would allo...