Effect of electron-hole interaction on electron spin relaxation in GaAs-AlGaAs quantum wells

We measured electron spin relaxation with changing the spatial electron-hole (e-h) separation by applying an electric field in GaAs-AlGaAs quantum wells at room temperature (RT). Even though the electron spin relaxation at RT was previously believed to be independent of any e-h interactions, we found that the electron spin relaxation was drastically suppressed with an increase in the spatial e-h separation. We used a vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser with a separate confinement heterostructure (SCH-VCSEL) having a GaAs-AlGaAs quantum-well (QW) structure in the active region. The photoluminescence (PL) spectrum from the optically excited SCH-VCSEL is shown.