Spin polarization and magnetic dichroism in core-level photoemission from ferromagnets

In this thesis we present a theoretical investigation of angle- and spin-resolved core-level photoemission from ferromagnetic Fe and Ni. We also consider magneto-dichroic effects due to reversal of the photon helicity or reversal of the sample magnetization direction. In chapter 1, we provide a brief outline of the history of photoemission, and show how it has played an important role in the development of modern physics. We then review the basic elements of the theory of core-level photoemission, and discuss the validity of the some of the commonly-used approximations. In chapter 2, we present a one-electron theory to calculate spin- and angle-resolved photoemission spectra for an arbitrary photon polarization. The Hamiltonian includes both spin-orbit and exchange interactions. As test cases for the theory, we calculate the spin polarization and magnetic dichroism for the Fe 2p core level, and find that agreement with experiment is very good

Electric Field Control of Shallow Donor Impurities in Silicon

We present a tight-binding study of donor impurities in Si, demonstrating the adequacy of this approach for this problem by comparison with effective mass theory and experimental results. We consider the response of the system to an applied electric field: donors near a barrier material and in the presence of an uniform electric field may undergo two different ionization regimes according to the distance of the impurity to the Si/barrier interface. We show that for impurities ~ 5 nm below the barrier, adiabatic ionization is possible within switching times of the order of one picosecond, while for impurities ~ 10 nm or more below the barrier, no adiabatic ionization may be carried out by an external uniform electric field. Our results are discussed in connection with proposed Si:P quantum computer architectures.Comment: 18 pages, 6 figures, submitted to PR

Tight-binding study of the influence of the strain on the electronic properties of InAs/GaAs quantum dots

We present an atomistic investigation of the influence of strain on the electronic properties of quantum dots (QD's) within the empirical $s p^{3} s^{*}$ tight-binding (ETB) model with interactions up to 2nd nearest neighbors and spin-orbit coupling. Results for the model system of capped pyramid-shaped InAs QD's in GaAs, with supercells containing $10^{5}$ atoms are presented and compared with previous empirical pseudopotential results. The good agreement shows that ETB is a reliable alternative for an atomistic treatment. The strain is incorporated through the atomistic valence force field model. The ETB treatment allows for the effects of bond length and bond angle deviations from the ideal InAs and GaAs zincblende structure to be selectively removed from the electronic-structure calculation, giving quantitative information on the importance of strain effects on the bound state energies and on the physical origin of the spatial elongation of the wave functions. Effects of dot-dot coupling have also been examined to determine the relative weight of both strain field and wave function overlap.Comment: 22 pages, 7 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. B (in press) In the latest version, added Figs. 3 and 4, modified Fig. 5, Tables I and II,.and added new reference

Linear magnetic dichroism in the angular distribution of Ni 3p photoelectrons

The magnetic dichroism of the Ni 3p photoemission signal has been measured by means of chiral experiments with linearly polarized synchrotron radiation and calculated by means of a many-body small-cluster model. The high energy/angular resolution of the experiment and an improved statistics with respect to previous measurements with circularly polarized light, show that the experimentally measured effect is comparable to, but smaller than, tphotohe calculated effect. Thus previous conclusions on a large enhancement of the surface magnetic orbital moment in Ni are not confirmed