Anisotropy of the Zeeman effect in CdTe/Cd1−xMnxTe multiple quantum wells

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Incorporation of diluted magnetic semiconductors as the barrier material in heterostructures is of great interest since it allows one to induce magnetically large variations of the conduction- and valence-band offsets which, in turn, give rise to large variations of the carrier confinement energies observed by optical spectroscopy. This Zeeman effect is now well understood for a field applied along the heterostructure growth axis. Then both the heavy- and light-hole-related lines split approximately symmetrically into two circularly polarized components. In this paper we analyze the Zeeman splitting observed for a magnetic field applied in the plane of the layers. Then at low field the heavy-hole splitting is vanishingly small. At larger fields, very strongly asymmetric splittings are observed, reflecting the change of the ‘‘best’’ quantization axis, from the growth axis to the field direction. The theoretical analysis accounts well for both the Zeeman splittings and the change in the intensities of the linearly polarized lines.