Magnetooptical response of dilute magnetic semiconductors

Dilute magnetic semiconductors such as GaMnAs or InMnAs have the potential to revolutionize many information technologies related to data storage, data processing, and computing, In collaboration with J. Kono (Rice), we study various magnetooptical phenomena in dilute magnetic semiconductors: magnetooptical Kerr effect, Faraday effect, and magnetic circular dichroism. These phenomena provide unique information about electronic bandstructure of these materials, their magnetic state, and nature of ferromagnetic coupling. We have developed a 30-band kP model for quantitative modeling of magnetooptical effects and interpretation of experimental data obtained in the Kono lab. The modeling demonstrates excellent agreement with experiment and helps resolving some long-standing controversies. The first results of this work are submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett. (under review); see also http://arxiv.org/abs/0907.1546v1.