Optical control of a Mn spin embedded in a quantum dot

Abstract

We demonstrate a high degree of an optical spin preparation of a single Mn atom embedded in a CdTe/ZnTe quantum dot (QD). Due to the strong exchange interaction of the manganese atom with an exciton injected into the QD the spin orientation can be achieved by quasi-resonant or fully-resonant optical creation of the polarized electron-hole pairs. A measured spin memory of the isolated Mn atom, in most of the cases, is in the microsecond range, and depends on the built-in strain in the quantum dot. During the resonant optical pumping process exciton spin-flip can occur without a change of the Mn spin providing a way to directly read the dynamics of the pumped spin state. The manganese spin orientation is achieved in a few tens of ns. © 2010 IOP Publishing Ltd.