Interplay of the volume and surface plasmons in the electron energy loss spectra of C60_{60}

The results of a joint experimental and theoretical investigation of the C60 collective excitations in the process of inelastic scattering of electrons are presented. The shape of the electron energy loss spectrum is observed to vary when the scattering angle increases. This variation arising due to the electron diffraction of the fullerene shell is described by a new theoretical model which treats the fullerene as a spherical shell of a finite width and accounts for the two modes of the surface plasmon and for the volume plasmon as well. It is shown that at small angles, the inelastic scattering cross section is determined mostly by the symmetric mode of the surface plasmon, while at larger angles, the contributions of the antisymmetric surface plasmon and the volume plasmon become prominent.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figure

Formalism for Multiphoton Plasmon Excitation in Jellium Clusters

We present a new formalism for the description of multiphoton plasmon excitation processes in jellium clusters. By using our method, we demonstrate that, in addition to dipole plasmon excitations, the multipole plasmons (quadrupole, octupole, etc) can be excited in a cluster by multiphoton absorption processes, which results in a significant difference between plasmon resonance profiles in the cross sections for multiphoton as compared to single-photon absorption. We calculate the cross sections for multiphoton absorption and analyse the balance between the surface and volume plasmon contributions to multipole plasmons.Comment: 29 pages, 1 figur

Oscillation of spin polarization in a two-dimensional hole gas under a perpendicular magnetic field

Spin-charge coupling is studied for a strongly confined two-dimensional hole gas subject to a perpendicular magnetic field. The study is based on spin-charge coupled drift-diffusion equations derived from quantum-kinetic equations in an exact manner. The spin-orbit interaction induces an extra out-of-plane spin polarization. This contribution exhibits a persistent oscillatory pattern in the strong-coupling regime.Comment: 11 pages and 1 figur

Theoretical study of interacting hole gas in p-doped bulk III-V semiconductors

We study the homogeneous interacting hole gas in $p$-doped bulk III-V semiconductors. The structure of the valence band is modelled by Luttinger's Hamiltonian in the spherical approximation, giving rise to heavy and light hole dispersion branches, and the Coulomb repulsion is taken into account via a self-consistent Hartree-Fock treatment. As a nontrivial feature of the model, the self-consistent solutions of the Hartree-Fock equations can be found in an almost purely analytical fashion, which is not the case for other types of effective spin-orbit coupling terms. In particular, the Coulomb interaction renormalizes the Fermi wave numbers for heavy and light holes. As a consequence, the ground state energy found in the self-consistent Hartree-Fock approach and the result from lowest-order perturbation theory do not agree. We discuss the consequences of our observations for ferromagnetic semiconductors, and for the possible observation of the spin-Hall effect in bulk $p$-doped semiconductors. Finally, we also investigate elementary properties of the dielectric function in such systems.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, title slightly changed in the course of editorial process, a few references added, version to appear in Phys. Rev.

Optical Spin Orientation in Strained Superlattices

Optical orientation in the strained semiconductor superlattices is investigated theoretically. The dependence of the features in spin-polarization spectra on the structure parameters is clarified. The value of polarization in the first polarization maximum in the SL structures is shown to grow with the splitting between the hh- and lh- states of the valence band, the joint strain and confinement effects on the hh1- lh1 splitting being strongly influenced by the tunneling in the barriers. In strained structures with high barriers for the holes initial polarization can exceed 95 %. Calculated polarization spectra are close to the experimental spectra of polarized electron emission.Comment: 20 pages, 8 figure

Electron attachment to SF6 and lifetimes of SF6- negative ions

We study the process of low-energy electron capture by the SF6 molecule. Our approach is based on the model of Gauyacq and Herzenberg [J. Phys. B 17, 1155 (1984)] in which the electron motion is coupled to the fully symmetric vibrational mode through a weakly bound or virtual s state. By tuning the two free parameters of the model, we achieve an accurate description of the measured electron attachment cross section and good agreement with vibrational excitation cross sections of the fully symmetric mode. An extension of the model provides a limit on the characteristic time of intramolecular vibrational relaxation in highly-excited SF6-. By evaluating the total vibrational spectrum density of SF6-, we estimate the widths of the vibrational Feshbach resonances of the long-lived negative ion. We also analyse the possible distribution of the widths and its effect on the lifetime measurements, and investigate nonexponential decay features in metastable SF6-.Comment: 22 pages, 10 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Theory of spin-Hall transport of heavy holes in semiconductor quantum wells

Based on a proper definition of the spin current, we investigate the spin-Hall effect of heavy holes in narrow quantum wells in the presence of Rashba spin-orbit coupling by using a spin-density matrix approach. In contrast to previous results obtained on the basis of the conventional definition of the spin current, we arrive at the conclusion that an electric-field-induced steady-state spin-Hall current does not exist in both, pure and disordered infinite samples. Only an ac field can induce a spin-Hall effect in such systems.Comment: 6 pages, submitted to J. Phys.: Condens. Matte

Strain-Compensated AlInGaAs-GaAsP Superlattices for Highly-Polarized Electron Emission

Spin-polarized electron emission from the first superlattice photocathodes developed with strain compensation is investigated. An opposite strain in the quantum well and barrier layers is complished using an InAlGaAs/GaAsP superlattice structure. The measured values of maximum polarization and quantum yield for the structure with a 0.18 um-thick working layer are close to the best results reported for any strained superlattice photocathode structure, demonstrating the high potential of strain compensation for future photocathode applications. An analysis of the photoemission spectra is used to estimate the parameters responsible for the polarization losses.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figure

Spin-Hall transport of heavy holes in III-V semiconductor quantum wells

We investigate spin transport of heavy holes in III-V semiconductor quantum wells in the presence of spin-orbit coupling of the Rashba type due to structure-inversion asymmetry. Similarly to the case of electrons, the longitudinal spin conductivity vanishes, whereas the off-diagonal elements of the spin-conductivity tensor are finite giving rise to an intrinsic spin-Hall effect. For a clean system we find a closed expression for the spin-Hall conductivity depending on the length scale of the Rashba coupling and the hole density. In this limit the spin-Hall conductivity is enhanced compared to its value for electron systems, and it vanishes with increasing strength of the impurity scattering. As an aside, we also derive explicit expressions for the Fermi momenta and the densities of holes in the different dispersion branches as a function of the spin-orbit coupling parameter and the total hole density. These results are of relevance for the interpretation of possible Shubnikov-de Haas measurements detecting the Rashba spin splitting.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures included, some prefactor corrected, version to be published in Phys. Rev.

Non-exponential spin relaxation in magnetic field in quantum wells with random spin-orbit coupling

We investigate the spin dynamics of electrons in quantum wells where the Rashba type of spin-orbit coupling is present in the form of random nanosize domains. We study the effect of magnetic field on the spin relaxation in these systems and show that the spatial randomness of spin-orbit coupling limits the minimum relaxation rate and leads to a Gaussian time-decay of spin polarization due to memory effects. In this case the relaxation becomes faster with increase of the magnetic field in contrast to the well known magnetic field suppression of spin relaxation.Comment: published version, minor change