We report on the unusual and counter-intuitive behaviour of spin lifetime of excitons in coupled semiconductor quantum wells (CQWs) in the presence of in-plane magnetic field. Instead of conventional acceleration of spin relaxation due to the Larmor precession of electron and hole spins we observe a strong increase of the spin relaxation time at low magnetic fields followed by saturation and decrease at higher fields. We argue that this non-monotonic spin relaxation dynamics is a fingerprint of the magnetic quantum confined Stark effect. In the presence of electric field along the CQW growth axis, an applied magnetic field efficiently suppresses the exciton spin coherence, due to inhomogeneous broadening of the g-factor distribution.

P.Andreakou, A. V.Mikhailov, S. Cronenberger, D. Scalbert, A. Nalitov, A. V. Kavokin, M. Nawrocki, L. V. Butov, A. C. Gossard, M. Vladimirova. Influence of magnetic quantum confined Stark effect on the spin lifetime of indirect excitons, arXiv:1601.00427 (2016).

Indirect excitons in coupled quantum wells are long-living quasi-particles, explored in the studies of collective quantum states. We demonstrate, that despite the extremely low oscillator strength, their spin and population dynamics can by addressed by time-resolved pump-probe spectroscopy. Our experiments make it possible to unravel and compare spin dynamics of direct excitons, indirect excitons and residual free electrons in coupled quantum wells. Measured spin relaxation time of indirect excitons exceeds not only one of direct excitons, but also one of free electrons by two orders of magnitude.

P. Andreakou, S. Cronenberger, D. Scalbert, A. Nalitov, N.A. Gippius, A.V. Kavokin, M. Nawrocki, J.R. Leonard, L.V. Butov, K.L. Campman, A.C. Gossard, M. Vladimirova. Nonlinear optical spectroscopy of indirect excitons in biased coupled quantum wells, arXiv:1407.5500 (2014). Phys. Rev. B 91, 125437 (2015).

A.V. Nalitov, M. Vladimirova, A.V. Kavokin, L.V. Butov, N.A. Gippius, Nonlinear optical probe of indirect excitons, arXiv:1311.0165 (2014), Phys. Rev. B 89, 155309 (2014).