An enhancement of spin polarization by multiphoton pumping in semiconductors

Abstract

A pump–probe spectroscopic study has been carried out in zinc-blende bulk semiconductors. In the semiconductor samples, a spin-polarized carrier population is produced by the absorption of a monochromatic circularly polarized light beam with two-photon energy above the direct band gap in bulk semiconductors. The production of a carrier population with a net spin is a consequence of the optical selection rules for the heavy-hole and light-hole valence-to-conduction band transitions. This production is probed by the spin-dependent transmission of the samples in the time domain. The spin polarization of the conduction-band-electrons in dependences of delay of the probe beam as well as of pumping photon energy is estimated. The spin polarization is found to depolarize rapidly for pumping energy larger than the energy gap of the split-off band to the conduction band. From the polarization decays, the spin relaxation times are also estimated. Compared to one-photon pumping, the results, however, show that an enhancement of the spin-polarization is achieved by multiphoton excitation of the samples. The experimental results are compared with those obtained in calculations using second order perturbation theory of the spin transport model. A good agreement between experiment and theory is obtained. The observed results are discussed in details.