We review recent theoretical and experimental advances toward understanding the effects of nuclear spins in confined nanostructures. These systems, which include quantum dots, defect centers, and molecular magnets, are particularly interesting for their importance in quantum information processing devices, which aim to coherently manipulate single electron spins with high precision. On one hand...

We present experiments on the tuning of the spin-orbit interaction in a two-dimensional electron gas in an asymmetric InAs/AlSb quantum well using a gate. The observed dependence of the spin splitting energy on the electron density can be attributed solely to the change in the Fermi wave vector. The spin-orbit interaction parameter (a'0.6310 eV m) as such does not change significantly with elec...

Growing technological challenges and soaring costs are gradually bringing the MOSFET scaling to an end. This intensifies the search of alternative technologies and computational principles. The electron spin attracts attention as a possible candidate to be used in future electron devices for complimenting or even replacing the charge degree of freedom employed in MOSFETs. The spin state is char...

Recent and ongoing optical experiments on mechanisms and methods for control and gating of spin relaxation in semiconductor quantum wells are reviewed. We discuss work on high-mobility two-dimensional electron gases in (001)-grown GaAs/AlGaAs wells which reveals two new aspects of D’yakonov, Perel’ and Kachorovskii (DPK) spin dynamics, namely oscillatory spin evolution in a quasi-collision-free...

A method for Monte Carlo simulation of 2D spin-polarized electron transport in III–V semiconductor heterojunction (FETs) is presented. In the simulation, the dynamics of the electrons in coordinate and momentum space is treated semiclassically. The density matrix description of the spin is incorporated in the Monte Carlo method to account for the spin polarization dynamics. The spin–orbit inter...

We introduce a spin-orbit assisted electron-phonon e-ph coupling mechanism for carriers in semiconductor quantum wells and predict qualitatively the form and shape of anticrossings between the cyclotron resonance CR and optical LO and TO phonons. Since this e-ph interaction involves the electron spin it makes the predicted TO-CR anticrossing dependent on the filling factor and therefore on the ...

We study collective excitations in a helical electron liquid on a surface of three-dimensional topological insulator. Electron in helical liquid obeys Dirac-like equation for massless particles and direction of its spin is strictly determined by its momentum. Due to this spin-momentum locking, collective excitations in the system manifest themselves as coupled charge- and spin-density waves. We...

We describe a mechanism of spin transfer between individual quantum dots that does not require tunneling. Incident circularly-polarized photons create inter-band excitons with non-zero electron spin in the first quantum dot. When the quantum-dot pair is properly designed, this excitation can be transferred to the neighboring dot via the Coulomb interaction with either conservation or flipping o...

The spin Hall effect in a two-dimensional electron system on honeycomb lattice with both intrinsic and Rashba spin-orbit couplings is studied numerically. Integer quantized spin Hall conductance is obtained at the zero Rashba coupling limit when electron Fermi energy lies in the energy gap created by the intrinsic spin-orbit coupling, in agreement with recent theoretical prediction. While nonze...

We investigate the combined effect of spin-orbit scattering and electron-electron interactions on the probability distribution of g factors of metal nanoparticles. Using random matrix theory, we find that even a relatively small interaction strength significantly increases g-factor fluctuations for not-too-strong spin-orbit scattering (ratio of spin-orbit rate and single-electron level spacing ...