Electric-dipole-induced spin resonance in quantum dots

An alternating electric field, applied to a quantum dot, couples to the electron spin via the spin-orbit interaction. We analyze different types of spin-orbit coupling known in the literature and find two efficient mechanisms of spin control in quantum dots. The linear in momentum Dresselhaus and Rashba spin-orbit couplings give rise to a fully transverse effective magnetic field in the presence of a Zeeman splitting at lowest order in the spin-orbit interaction. The cubic in momentum Dresselhaus terms are efficient in a quantum dot with anharmonic confining potential and give rise to a spin-electric coupling proportional to the orbital magnetic field. We derive an effective spin Hamiltonian, which can be used to implement spin manipulation on a time scale of 10 ns with the current experimental setups.