Optical orientation of trions in charge-tunable InAs/GaAs quantum dots

We report an optical orientation of excitons and trions (singly charged exciton ) in individual charge-tunable self-assembled InAs/GaAs quantum dots. When the number of electrons varies from 0 to 2, the trion photoluminescence under quasi-resonant excitation gets progressively polarized from zero to ∼ 100%. We discuss this behaviour as the efficient quenching of exciton spin quantum beats in anisotropic quantum dots due to the trion formation. This result indicates a long hole-spin relaxation time larger than the radiative lifetime, confirmed by time-resolved photoluminescence measurements carried out on a quantum dots ensemble. (author)