Spin Decay in a Quantum Dot Coupled to a Quantum Point Contact

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We consider a mechanism of spin decay for an electron spin in a quantum dot due to coupling to a nearby quantum point contact (QPC) with and without an applied bias voltage. The coupling of spin to charge is induced by the spin-orbit interaction in the presence of a magnetic field. We perform a microscopic calculation of the effective Hamiltonian coupling constants to obtain the QPC-induced spin relaxation and decoherence rates in a realistic system. This rate is shown to be proportional to the shot noise of the QPC in the regime of large bias voltage and scales as a⁻⁶ where a is the distance between the quantum dot and the QPC. We find that, for some specific orientations of the setup with respect to the crystallographic axes, the QPC-induced spin relaxation and decoherence rates vanish, while the charge sensitivity of the QPC is not changed. This result can be used in experiments to minimize QPC-induced spin decay in read-out schemes.