Radiofrequency driving of coherent electron spin dynamics in $n$-GaAs detected by Faraday rotation

Abstract

We suggest a new pump-probe method for studying semiconductor spin dynamics based on pumping of carrier spins by a pulse of oscillating radiofrequency (rf) magnetic field and probing by measuring the Faraday rotation of a short laser pulse. We demonstrate this technique on $n$-GaAs and observe the onset and decay of coherent spin precession during and after the course of rf pulse excitation. We show that the rf field resonantly addresses the electron spins with Larmor frequencies close to that of the rf field. This opens the opportunity to determine the homogeneous spin coherence time $T_2$, that is inaccessible directly in standard all-optical pump-probe experiments.