  We study the influence of the environment on an optically induced rotation of
a single electron spin in a charged semiconductor quantum dot. We analyze the
decoherence mechanisms resulting from the dynamical lattice response to the
charge evolution induced in a trion-based optical spin control scheme.
Moreover, we study the effect of the finite trion lifetime and of the
imperfections of the unitary evolution such as off-resonant excitations and the
nonadiabaticity of the driving. We calculate the total error of the operation
on a spin-based qubit in an InAs/GaAs quantum dot system and discuss possible
optimization against the different contributions. We indicate the parameters
which allow for coherent control of the spin with a single qubit gate error as
low as $10^{-4}$.
