Electron spin relaxation in zinc-blende heterostructures

Spin relaxation in-plane anisotropy is predicted for heterostructures based on zinc-blende semiconductors. It is shown that it manifests itself especially clearly if the two contributions to the D'yakonov-Perel' spin relaxation mechanism (due to the bulk spin-orbit interaction term and the Rashba term) are comparable in efficiency. Concentration dependences of spin relaxation rates for a heterostructure grown along the [001] direction are plotted for different electron spin orientations.