Phase-coherent transport and spin relaxation in InAs nanowires grown by molecule beam epitaxy

摘要

We report low-temperature magnetotransport studies of individual InAs nanowires grown by molecule beam epitaxy. At low magnetic fields, the magnetoconductance characteristics exhibit a crossover between weak antilocalization and weak localization by changing either the gate voltage or the temperature. The observed crossover behavior can be well described in terms of relative scales of the transport characteristic lengths extracted based on the quasi-one-dimensional theory of weak localization in the presence of spin-orbit interaction. The spin relaxation length extracted from the magnetoconductance data is found to be in the range of 80-100 nm, indicating the presence of strong spin-orbit coupling in the InAs nanowires. Moreover, the amplitude of universal conductance fluctuations in the nanowires is found to be suppressed at low temperatures due to the presence of strong spin-orbit scattering.