Origin of magnetic circular dichroism in GaMnAs: giant zeeman splitting versus spin dependent density of states

Phys Rev Lett. 2009 Jun 19;102(24):247202. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.102.247202. Epub 2009 Jun 18.

Abstract

We present a unified interpretation of experimentally observed magnetic circular dichroism (MCD) in the ferromagnetic semiconductor (Ga,Mn)As, based on theoretical arguments, which demonstrates that MCD in this material arises primarily from a difference in the density of spin-up and spin-down states in the valence band brought about by the presence of the Mn impurity band, rather than being primarily due to the Zeeman splitting of electronic states.