Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) and Tohoku University have developed a measurement method of complicated behavior of electron spins in semiconductors, and have successfully conducted experiments that control the direction of electron spins by ultrasonic waves at the first time in the world.

 The research results provide us a technology to control behavior of electron spins without losing spin coherence. It had been a task of utilizing spins in semiconductors for information processing. These results are expected to accelerate studies of semiconductor spintronics, and to be applied to the development of spin transistors reducing power conduction greatly and quantum computers allowing information processing at ultrafast speed.

 The research results have been acquired in collaboration with Paul Drude Institute for Solid-State Electronics in Germany, and published Physical Review Letters on May 27, 2011. The paper’s title is “Acoustically induced spin-orbit interactions revealed by two-dimensional imaging of spin transport in GaAs”.

 A part of the research has been conducted with the aid of Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research from Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.

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