Getting a Handle on Spintronics with Optical Spin Electrodes – Jay Kikkawa

Date: Thu. February 21st, 2002, 4:15 pm-5:15 pm
Location: Rockefeller 301

Spintronics is an emerging field aimed at using the electron’s spin instead of its charge for information processing and computation. This talk will describe how basic research in this field employs beams of light that behave analogously to conventional electrodes. We will provide an overview of recent fast optical experiments that reveal how the electron’s spin memory in semiconductors is influenced by electrical doping, spatial motion, interfaces, and hyperfine interactions. In the latter case, electron spins not only serve as a magnetometer of local nuclear fields, but can also be used to induce NMR with near-visible light rather than conventional radio-frequency fields.