Time-resolved Kerr rotation experiments show that two kinds of spin modes exist in diluted magnetic semiconductors: (i) coupled electron-magnetic ion spin excitations and (ii) excitations of magnetic ion spin subsystem, which are decoupled from electron spins. The latter modes exhibit much longer spin coherence time and require a description, which goes beyond the mean field approximation.
We report on study of magnetic impurities spin relaxation in diluted magnetic semiconductors above Curie temperature. Systems with a high concentration of magnetic impurities where magnetic correlations take place were studied. The developed theory assumes that main channel of spin relaxation is mobile carriers providing indirect interactions between magnetic impurities. Our theoretical model is supported by experimental measurements of manganese spin relaxation time in GaMnAs by means of spin-flip Raman scattering. It is found that with temperature increase spin relaxation rate of ferromagnetic samples increases and tends to that measured in paramagnetic sample.
We explore the impact of a Rashba-type spin-orbit interaction in the conduction band on the spin dynamics of hot excitons in diluted magnetic semiconductor quantum wells. In materials with strong spin-orbit coupling, we identify parameter regimes where spin-orbit effects greatly accelerate the spin decay and even change the dynamics qualitatively in the form of damped oscillations. Furthermore, we show that the application of a small external magnetic field can be used to either mitigate the influence of spin-orbit coupling or entirely remove its effects for fields above a material-dependent threshold.
We formulate a complete microscopic theory of a coupled pair of bound magnetic polarons, the bound-magnetic-polaron molecule (BMPM) in a diluted magnetic semiconductor (DMS) by taking into account both a proper two-body nature of the impurity-electron wave function and within the general spin-rotation-invariant approach to the electronic states. We also take into account both the Heisenberg and the antiferromagnetic kinetic-exchange interactions, as well as the ferromagnetic coupling within the common spin BMPM cloud. The thermodynamic fluctuations of the spin cloud within the polaron effective Bohr radius of each polaron are taken as Gaussian.
We present a dynamical model that successfully explains the observed time evolution of the magnetization in diluted magnetic semiconductor quantum wells after weak laser excitation. Based on the pseudo-fermion formalism and a second order many-particle expansion of the exact p-d exchange interaction, our approach goes beyond the usual mean-field approximation. It includes both the sub-picosecond demagnetization dynamics and the slower relaxation processes which restore the initial ferromagnetic order in a nanosecond time scale. In agreement with experimental results, our numerical simulations show that, depending on the value of the initial lattice temperature, a subsequent enhancement of the total magnetization may be observed within a time scale of few hundreds of picoseconds.
We show the possibility of long-range ferrimagnetic ordering with a saturation magnetisation of the order of 1 Bohr magneton per spin for arbitrarily low concentration of magnetic impurities in semiconductors, provided that the impurities form a superstructure satisfying the conditions of the Lieb-Mattis theorem. Explicit examples of such superstructures are given for the wurtzite lattice, and the temperature of ferrimagnetic transition is estimated from a high-temperature expansion. Exact diagonalization studies show that small fragments of the structure exhibit enhanced magnetic response and isotropic superparamagnetism at low temperatures. A quantum transition in a high magnetic field is considered and similar superstructures in cubic semiconductors are discussed as well.