Magneto-Optical Properties of Rare-Earth Doped Semiconductors

Abstract

There is interest in magnetic properties of doped semiconductors for possible applications in spintronics and for gaining further insight into the incorporation sites of the dopants. To this end, optical spectroscopy was conducted on several rare earth doped systems subject to a magnetic field. In particular, several important results were obtained for erbium doped gallium nitride. The results provide insight into states of the dopants, effective g factors, and site symmetry, and some of the difficulties inherent in performing measurements of those properties. Additional results were obtained regarding a previously observed effect in which reversing the orientation of an applied magnetic field seems to change transition probabilities of rare-earth dopants in some cases.