Defect-mediated spin relaxation and dephasing in graphene

Abstract

A principal motivation to develop graphene for future devices has been its promise for quantum spintronics. Hyperfine and spin-orbit interactions are expected to be negligible in single-layer graphene. Spin transport experiments, on the other hand, show that graphene's spin relaxation is orders of magnitude faster than predicted. We present a quantum interference measurement that disentangles sources of magnetic and non-magnetic decoherence in graphene. Magnetic defects are shown to be the primary cause of spin relaxation, while spin-orbit interaction is undetectably small.