Ultrafast relaxation dynamics of electrons at dielectric-metal interfaces reflect the nature of the electronic interaction with both the substrate and the adsorbed layer. The full understanding of macroscopic electrical transport properties across an interface requires the knowledge of the energies, spatial extent of the interfacial electronic states, and the electron scattering length. With th...

We have examined size-dependent electronic relaxation dynamics in isolated semiconducting mercury cluster anions using time-resolved photoelectron imaging. Relaxation following excitation from within the conduction (p-) band occurs on an ∼3–40 ps timescale and is attributed to non-adiabatic relaxation through the p-band. Exciting an electron from the valence (s-) band into the conduction band c...

We have measured the relaxation time, T1, of the spin of a single electron confined in a semiconductor quantum dot (a proposed quantum bit). In a magnetic field, applied parallel to the two-dimensional electron gas in which the quantum dot is defined, Zeeman splitting of the orbital states is directly observed by measurements of electron transport through the dot. By applying short voltage puls...

A very large electron sheet density and a relatively long momentum relaxation time of the two-dimensional electron gas in III-N heterostructures makes this materials system to be very attractive for plasmonic electronics applications.

In this Letter, the first spin noise spectroscopy measurements in semiconductor systems of reduced effective dimensionality are reported. The nondemolition measurement technique gives access to the otherwise concealed intrinsic, low temperature electron spin relaxation time of n-doped GaAs (110) quantum wells and to the corresponding low temperature anisotropic spin relaxation. The Brownian mot...

We report on the optical manipulation of the electron spin relaxation time in a GaAs-based heterostructure. Experimental and theoretical study shows that the average electron spin relaxes through hyperfine interaction with the lattice nuclei, and that the rate can be controlled by electron-electron interactions. This time has been changed from 300 ns down to 5 ns by variation of the laser frequ...