An international team of scientists, including University of York physicist Dr Irene D’Amico, has shed new light on a fundamental area of physics which could have important implications for future electronic devices and the transfer of information at the quantum level.
The experimental and theoretical work, carried out by researchers from York’s Department of Physics, the Institute of Nanoscience in Paris and the University of Missouri-Columbia, USA, could have important implications for spintronics and quantum information technologies.
The team looked at semiconductors’ structures – the base of current electronic devices and of many spintronic device proposals - and the problems created by internal fields known as spin-orbit fields. In general, these tend to act differently on each electronic spin, causing a phenomenon referred to as ‘spin-decoherence’. This means that the electronic spins will behave in a way which cannot be completely controlled or predicted, which has important implications for device functionalities.
To address this problem, the scientists looked at semiconductor structures called ‘quantum wells’ where the spins can be excited in a collective, coherent way by using lasers and light scattering.
They demonstrated that these collective spin excitations possess a macroscopic spin of quantum nature. In other words, the electrons and their spins act as a single entity making them less susceptible to spin orbit fields, so decoherence is highly suppressed.
This story is reprinted from material from The University of York, with editorial changes made by Materials Today. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily represent those of Elsevier. Link to original source.