The observation of a strong increase in the photoconductivity of Cdo95Mno05S under an applied magnetic field is reported. The effect, observed at low temperatures, is explained to arise due to the dramatic suppression of the Auger recombination processes involving the excitation of Mn + ions ( A,~T, &2& transitions within a 3d shell). The single-ion-assisted Auger recombination, which determines the lifetime of the excess carriers at low magnetic fields, become forbidden for the totally spin-polarized single ions, and at high magnetic field the cluster-assisted Auger recombination dominates.The identity of particles results in the dependence of the cross section of their mutual scattering (both elastic and inelastic) on the polarization of their spins, even if no spinorbit coupling is taken into account. Correspondingly, the spin polarization of carriers in a semiconductor due to an applied magnetic field can lead to a specific magnetic-field dependence of different kinetic coefficients. In ordinary semiconductors, however, it is difficult to observe this phenomenon in the pure form because the effect of the magnetic field on the orbital movement has usually the same order of magnitude (or even higher). The situation is more favorable in the semimagnetic semiconductors (SMSC's) (also referred to as diluted magnetic semiconductors). In these alloys the exchange interaction between the spin of a carrier and those of magnetic ions results in giant spin splitting of the carrier levels in the magnetic field (the effective g factor can reach a few hundred in the region of sufficiently low temperatures). ' Along with this, the effective masses of carriers in the wide-gap SMSC are high enough, cyclotron energies are small, and in the first approximation one can neglect the effect of the magnetic field on the orbital degrees of freedom. In this paper we report on the observation of an effect in such a semiconductor: the strong increase in the photoconductivity (PC) of Cdo 95Mnp psS in an applied magnetic field. This increase is solely determined by the spin polarization of the carriers and 3d electrons of manganese ions, which reduces drastically the recombination rate.The spin-dependent mechanism of recombination, which we propose to explain the observed PC increase, is the exchange Auger recombination with energy transferred to an excitation of a Mn ion. This channel of recombination is quite probable because the excitation energies of Mn from the ground state At (the total spin S= -', ) to excited states Tt and T2 (with S= -, ) are 2.43 and 2.58 eV, respectively, which is close to the band gap of Cdp95Mnpp5S. For the exact conservation of the total energy such an Auger recombination should be, generally speaking, phonon assisted. The direct experimental hint of the existence of these recombination processes is the fact that the photoexcitation of carriers in wide-gap SMSC's with x)0.01 results in the luminescence due to internal transitions of the 3d electrons of manganese. " Note also that the energy transfer from exc...
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.