Phys.org March 27, 2023
So far, only uniformly polarized light has been exploited to control electron spins. However, if the polarization has an additional spatial structure it can produce spatially structured electron spins, opening up new ways to store information. Researchers in Japan devised a method for generating spatially structured electron spins using a structured light with spatially varying polarization profile. They transferred spatially variant polarization of topologically structured light to the spatial spin texture in a semiconductor quantum well. The electron spin texture was directly excited by a vector vortex beam with a spatial helicity structure. The spin texture efficiently evolved into a helical spin wave pattern owing to the spin-orbit effective magnetic fields in the persistent spin helix state by controlling the spatial wave number of the excited spin mode. By tuning the repetition length and azimuthal angle, they simultaneously generated helical spin waves with opposite phases by a single beam. According to the researchers their work could lead to elemental technologies for higher-order quantum media conversion and information capacity enhancement using spin textures… read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Sketch of imprinting of polarization distribution by VVB on spin texture in a semiconductor QW… Credit: Phys. Rev. Lett. 130, 126701, 24 March 2023