Graphene has great potential for fabrication of ultrafast opto-electronics, in which relaxation and transport of photoexcited carriers determine device performance. Even though ultrafast carrier relaxation in graphene has been studied vigorously, transport properties of photoexcited carriers in graphene are largely unknown. In this work, we utilize an ultrafast grating imaging technique to measure lifetime (τ r), diffusion coefficient (D), diffusion length (L) and mobility (µ) of photoexcited carriers in monoand multi-layer graphene non-invasively. In monolayer graphene, D~10,000cm 2 /s and µ~120,000cm 2 /Vs have been observed, both of which decrease drastically in multilayer graphene, indicating that the remarkable transport properties in monolayer graphene originate from its unique Dirac-Cone energy structure. Mobilities of photoexcited carriers measured here are several times larger than the Hall and Field-Effect mobilities reported in literature (<15,000cm 2 /Vs), due to the high energy of photoexcited carriers. Our results indicate the importance of obtaining monolayer graphene to realize high-performance graphene devices, as well as the necessity to use transport properties of photoexcited carriers for predicting the performance of graphene-based opto-electronics.

Spin relaxation dynamics of holes in intrinsic GaAs quantum wells is studied using time-resolved circular dichromatic absorption spectroscopy at room temperature. It is found that ultrafast dynamics is dominated by the cooperative contributions of band filling and many-body effects. The relative contribution of the two effects is opposite in strength for electrons and holes. As a result, transient circular dichromatic differential transmission (TCD-DT) with co- and cross-circularly polarized pump and probe presents different strength at several picosecond delay time. Ultrafast spin relaxation dynamics of excited holes is sensitively reflected in TCD-DT with cross-circularly polarized pump and probe. A model, including coherent artifact, thermalization of nonthermal carriers and the cooperative contribution of band filling and many-body effects, is developed, and used to fit TCD-DT with cross-circularly polarized pump and probe. Spin relaxation time of holes is achieved as a function of excited hole density for the first time at room temperature, and increases with hole density, which disagrees with a theoretical prediction based on EY spin relaxation mechanism, implying that EY mechanism may be not dominant hole spin relaxation mechanism at room temperature, but DP mechanism is dominant possibly.

A transmission-grating-sampled circular dichroism absorption spectroscopy (TGS-CDAS) and its theoretical model are developed sensitively to measure decay dynamics of a transient spin grating (TSG). A binary transmission grating with the same period as TSG is set behind TSG. It allows only a same small part of each period in TSG measured by circular dichroism absorption effect of a probe. In this way, the zero average of spin-dependent effects measured over a whole period in TSG is avoided so that TGS-CDAS has a high sensitivity to spin evolution in TSG. Spin transport experiments are performed on GaAs/AlGaAs quantum wells. Experimental results prove the feasibility and reliability of TGS-CDAS.

In this paper, the ultrafast dynamics of spin relaxation and recombination of photoexcited carriers has been studied in (001) GaAs quantum wells using a time-resolved pump-probe absorption spectroscopy under a nearly resonant excitation of heavy-hole excitons. It is found that the spin polarization of carriers influences both absorption saturation of linear polarized light and recombination dynamics of carriers. Pump fluence dependence of the ultrafast dynamics of spin relaxation and recombination of carriers is further studied, which shows that the effect of spin polarization on linearly polarized absorption saturation is reduced with lowering pump fluence. Spin-polarization-dependent absorption saturation effect can be ignored only as the pump fluence is weak. However, spin-polarization dependence of recombination dynamics is presented in turn at low pump fluence. Our analysis shows that such dependence originates from the spin-polarization dependence of the density of excitons formed in the excited carriers because recombination time constants of excitons and free carriers are very different so that the ratio of exciton density to free carrier density can influence the recombination dynamics. The spin-polarization dependence of ultrafast recombination dynamics of photoexcited carriers implies that the recombination time constant in the calculation of spin relaxation time from spin relaxation dynamics should be the recombination time of spin-polarized carriers, rather than the recombination lifetime of non-spin-polarized carriers as done currently. Exciton density is estimated based on 2D mass action law, which agrees very well with our experimental results. The good agreement between theoretical calculation and experimental results reveals that the effect of Coulomb screening on the formation of excitons may be ignored for a lower excited carrier density.