Observation of extremely slow hole spin relaxation in self-assembled quantum dots

We report the measurement of extremely slow hole spin relaxation dynamics in small ensembles of self-assembled InGaAs quantum dots. Individual spin oriented holes are optically created in the lowest orbital state of each dot and read out after a defined storage time using spin memory devices. The resulting luminescence signal exhibits a pronounced polarization memory effect that vanishes for long storage times. The hole spin relaxation dynamics are measured as a function of external magnetic field and lattice temperature. We show that hole spin relaxation can occur over remarkably long time scales in strongly confined quantum dots (up to similar to 270 mu s), as predicted by recent theory. Our findings are supported by calculations that reproduce both the observed magnetic field and temperature dependencies. The results suggest that hole spin relaxation in strongly confined quantum dots is due to spin-orbit-mediated phonon scattering between Zeeman levels, in marked contrast to higher-dimensional nanostructures where it is limited by valence band mixing.