Electrical control of spin-injection in spin light emitting diodes and lasers via spin-orbit torque effect – SOTspinLED

Direct high-speed modulation of circular polarization of coherent light opens the way for a new communication technology and offers the possibility to overcome the main bottleneck of the optical telecommunications. An innovative way to modulate the circular polarization of a light source is to inject a spin-polarized current from a ferromagnetic spin-injector and to take advantage from spin amplification in lasers to transform spin information into optical polarization information. One emerging challenge is to electrically modulate the spin-injector magnetization in order to control the output circular polarization. The main objective of this project is to use spin-orbit torque with spin Hall effect to control the spin injection direction and achieve electrical control of the circular polarization of light emitted by LEDs and semiconductor lasers. This goal is supported by unprecedented analytical and experimental investigation on spin-injected laser dynamics and noise. The success of this project will have significant impact not only on the optical communication technologies, but also on other types of applications based on the electrical control of the emission of circularly polarized light as cryptography, optical atomic clocks and quantum sensors.