Electron/Nuclear spin domain walls in quantum Hall systems

Abstract

Motivated by recent all optical NMR experiments\cite{Awschalom1,Awschalom2} on GaAs quantum wells, we propose new experiments that would involve creating spatially modulated nuclear spin profiles. Due to the hyperfine coupling these would appear as spatially modulated Overhauser fields for the electrons that could have an amplitude large enough to cancel or even reverse the external Zeeman field at some places. We discuss 2D electron gas transport in the quantum Hall regime at filling factor $ν= 1$, and demonstrate the existence of collective modes and topological excitations induced in the electron gas by various nuclear spin patterns. We calculate the 1/T$_1$ relaxation rate of the nuclear spins due to coupling with these low lying collective modes and also discuss how transport and the low energy modes would be affected by a highly anisotropic g-tensor, which is special to a GaAs quantum well grown in the $\lbrack 110 \rbrack$ direction.