ABSTRACT

While conventional electronic devices rely on charge for the storage and transport of information, the use of spin for such purposes may lead to new paradigms in quantum electronics with improved speed and qualitatively different functionality. A generic requirement of these new systems is the storage and manipulation of classical and/or quantum spin information. Femtosecond-resolved optical techniques are used to create a superposition of the electronic basis spin states defined by an applied field, and to follow the phase, amplitude, and location of the precessing spin population. Here we discuss studies in both magnetically-and electronically-doped quantum structures and thin films, demonstrating a rich variety of coherent spin phenomena in these systems.