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Updated: Mar 24, 2026

Measurement of Coherence Decay in GaMnAs Using Femtosecond Four-wave Mixing
Published on: December 3, 2013
Effects of Dephasing on Spin Lifetime in Ballistic Spin-Orbit Materials
Aron W Cummings1, Stephan Roche1,2
1Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2), CSIC and The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, Campus UAB, Bellaterra, 08193 Barcelona, Spain.
Abstract:
We theoretically investigate spin dynamics in spin-orbit-coupled materials. In the ballistic limit, the spin lifetime is dictated by dephasing that arises from energy broadening plus a nonuniform spin precession. For the case of clean graphene, we find a strong anisotropy with spin lifetimes that can be short even for modest energy scales, on the order of a few ns. These results offer deeper insight into the nature of spin dynamics in graphene, and are also applicable to the investigation of other systems where spin-orbit coupling plays an important role.
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