Electric field-driven coherent spin reorientation and spin rephasing of optically generated electron spin packets in InGaAs

Full electric-field control of spin orientations is one of the key tasks in semiconductor spintronics. We demonstrate that electric field pulses can be utilized for phase-coherent 2$\pi$ spin rotation of optically generated electron spin packets in InGaAs epilayers using time-resolved Faraday rotation. Through spin-orbit interaction, the electric-field pulses act as local magnetic field pulses (LMFP). By the temporal control of the LMFP, we can turn on and off electron spin precession and thereby rotate the spin direction into arbitrary orientations in a 2-dimensional plane [1]. Moreover, using two subsequent pulses of opposite polarity allows us to perform spin echo measurements by reversing the spin precession direction. Although our spin transport experiment is in the diffusive regime, we unexpectedly observe that electric field-induced spin dephasing is reversible to a large extend.\\ $[1]$ S. Kuhlen \textit{et al}. arXiv 1107.4307