Motivated by recent interest in the role of the hyperfine interaction in quantum dots, we study the dynamics of a localized electron spin coupled to many nuclei. An important feature of the model is that the coupling to an individual nuclear spin depends on its position in the quantum dot. We introduce a semiclassical description of the system valid in the limit of a large number of nuclei and analyze the resulting classical dynamics. Contrary to a natural assumption of chaoticity of such dynamics, the correlation functions of the electron spin with an arbitrary initial condition show no decay in time. Rather, they exhibit complicated undamped oscillations. This may be attributed to the fact that the system has many integrals of motion and is close to an integrable one. The correlation functions averaged over initial conditions do exhibit a slow decay ($\sim 1∕\ln \left(t\right)$ at $t\to \infty$).

• Received 14 April 2004

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.70.205327