Resonant inelastic scattering in dilute magnetic semiconductors by x-ray fluorescence spectroscopy

Abstract

As modern, technologically important materials have become more complex, element specific techniques have become invaluable in studying the electronic structure of individual components from the system. Soft x-ray fluorescence (SXF) and absorption (SXA) spectroscopies provide a unique means of measuring element and angular momentum density of electron states, respectively, for the valence and conducting bands in complex materials. X-ray absorption and the decay through x-ray emission are generally assumed to be two independent one-photon processes. Recent studies, however have demonstrated that SXF excited near the absorption threshold generate an array of spectral features that depend on nature of materials, particularly on the localization of excited states in s and d-band solids and that these two processes can no be longer treated as independent. Resonant SXF offers thus the new way to study the dynamics of the distribution of electronic valence states in the presence of a hole which is bound to the electron low lying in the conduction band. This process can simulate the interaction between hole-electron pair in wide gap semiconductors. Therefore such studies can help in understanding of transport and optics phenomena in the wide gap semiconductors. The authors report the result of Mn and S L-resonant emission in Zn{sub 1{minus}x}Mn{sub x}S (with x=0.2 and 0.3) and MnS as the energy of exciting radiation is tuned across the Mn and S L{sub 3,2} absorption edge, along with the resonant excited spectra from elemental Mn as a reference.