Effects of Band Population on the Magnetooptical Propertiers of the Lead Salts

Abstract

Recent experimental and theoretical studies of the lead salts have developed the major features of the one-electron band structure. The valence and conduction band extrema are located at the L point of the Brillouin zone and have only the twofold Kramers degeneracy required by time-reversal symmetry. There are four equivalent valence bands and four equivalent conduction bands. For each compound the effective masses in the conduction and valence bands are nearly equal. The bands are somewhat anisotropic and nonparabolic. (The energy ellipsoids, oriented along the [111] directions, are illustrated in Fig. 1.) These features of the band structure make the lead salts very attractive for studying the dynamical effects due to free carriers and particularly the interband effects, since the complications arising from a complex valence or conduction band are avoided.