Spin control and coherent optics in semiconductor nanostructures

Abstract

The thesis puts the properties of novel spintronic devices into a context with coherent optical phenomena. The first focus area deals with the magnetic manipulation of spins inside a ferromagnet-semiconductor quantum well hybrid structure. The second focus area is about optical coherence and its loss with the excitation field in InGaAs quantum dots that are embedded in microcavity structures. In previous works by it was shown that the information stored in the optical field can be transferred to the spin system, where it is decoupled from the optical vacuum field and may persist much longer. The approach is used used to measure the spin dynamics of carriers from a CdTe quantum well in the ground state without creating a macroscopic spin polarization.