Layer-dependent spin properties of charge carriers in vertically coupled telecom quantum dots

Abstract

We investigate the spin properties of charge carriers in vertically coupled InAs/InAlGaAs quantum dots grown by molecular beam epitaxy, emitting at telecom C-band wavelengths, with a silicon δ -doped layer. Using time-resolved pump-probe Faraday ellipticity measurements, we systematically study single-, two-, and four-layer quantum dot (QD) configurations to quantify how vertical coupling affects key spin-coherence parameters. Our measurements reveal distinct layer-dependent effects: (i) Adding a second QD layer flips the resident charge from electrons to holes, consistent with optically induced electron tunneling into lower-energy dots and resultant hole charging. (ii) Starting from the four-layer sample, the pump-probe signal develops an additional nonoscillating, decaying component absent in single- and two-layer samples, attributed to multiple layer growth changing the strain environment, which reduces heavy-hole and light-hole mixing. (iii) With four layers or more, hole spin mode locking (SML) can be observed, enabling quantitative extraction of the hole coherence time T 2 ≈ 13 ns from SML amplitude saturation. We also extract longitudinal spin relaxation ( T 1 ) and transverse ( T 2 * ) spin dephasing times, g-factors, and inhomogeneous dephasing parameters for both electrons and holes across all layer configurations. The hole spin dephasing times T 2 * remain relatively constant (2.3–2.7 ns) across layer counts, while longitudinal relaxation times T 1 decrease with increasing layers (from 0.9 µ s for single-layer to 0.32 µ s for four-layer samples). These findings provide potential design guidelines for engineering spin coherence in telecom-band QDs for quantum information applications.