Optical Measurement of Electron Spin Lifetimes in Gallium Arsenide

Optical Measurement of Electron Spin Lifetimes in Gallium Arsenide Dallas Carl Smith Department of Physics and Astronomy Bachelor of Science We measured T1 spin lifetimes for electrons in gallium arsenide at various magnetic field strengths. To perform these measurements, we initialized and probed the spin states using optical techniques. By changing the delay between the initializing (pump) and probe laser pulses, we traced out the spin polarization decay curves. From this data we extracted the T1 spin lifetimes. This technique proved to be effective in measuring lifetimes in magnetic fields between 0 T and 7 T and at temperatures of 1.5 K and 5 K. Lifetimes in our sample were measured up to 800 ns.