Electron spin relaxation dynamics in GaN: influence of temperature, doping density, and crystal orientation

We present a systematic study of electron spin relaxation in wurtzite GaN. Fast relaxation is caused by a Rashba effective magnetic field that linearly depends on the electron momentum k. The field prevents spin lifetimes to exceed 50 ps at room temperature and is the origin of an anisotropic spin relaxation tensor that we evidence by magnetic field dependent magneto-optical pump-probe measurements. In addition, the spin lifetime depends as compared to GaAs - weaker on temperature and doping density. We give a fully analytical description of both effects based on D'yakonov-Perel' theory that describes our results quantitatively without any fitting parameter.