Determination of the Hole Effective Magnetic Moment in Quantum Wells in a Parallel Magnetic Field

Abstract

We present a theoretical and experimental study of interband magnetooptics in GaAs-AlGaAs quantum wells in a magnetic field parallel to the layers. This study yields a precise and direct determination of the parameter κ, describing the hole effective magnetic moment. Experimentally, for thin wells, both transitions from heavy and light hole states experience a diamagnetic shift but only those deriving from light hole states are split by the field. The observed light hole splitting is shown to depend solely on the parameter κ as far as the well width is less than the magnetic length. From a comparison between theory and experiments, we obtain for GaAs, a value of κ = 0.7 which is substantially smaller than the value commonly assumed in the literature.