Kinetic approach to the nuclear-spin polaron formation

Abstract: Under optical cooling of nuclei, a strongly correlated nuclear-spin polaron state can form in semiconductor nanostructures with localized charge carriers due to the strong hyperfine interaction of the localized electron spin with the surrounding nuclear spins. Here we develop a kinetic-equation formalism describing the nuclear-spin polaron formation. We present a derivation of the kinetic equations for an electron-nuclear spin system coupled to reservoirs of different electron and nuclear spin temperatures which generate the exact thermodynamic steady state for equal temperatures independent of the system size. We illustrate our approach using the analytical solution of the central spin model in the limit of an Ising form of the hyperfine coupling. For homogeneous hyperfine coupling constants, i.e., the box model, the model is reduced to an analytically solvable form. Based on the analysis of the nuclear-spin distribution function and the electron-nuclear spin correlators, we derive a relation between the electron and nuclear spin temperatures, where the correlated nuclear-spin polaron state is formed. In the limit of large nuclear baths, this temperature line coincides with the critical temperature of the mean-field theory for polaron formation. The criteria of the polaron formation in a finite-size system are discussed. We demonstrate that the system's behavior at the transition temperature does not depend on details of the hyperfine-coupling distribution function but only on the effective number of coupled bath spins. In addition, the kinetic equations enable the analysis of the temporal formation of the nuclear-polaron state, where we find the build-up process predominated by the nuclear spin-flip dynamics.