Measurement of Coherence Decay in GaMnAs Using Femtosecond Four-wave Mixing

The application of femtosecond four-wave mixing to the study of fundamental properties of diluted magnetic semiconductors ((s,p)-d hybridization, spin-flip scattering) is described, using experiments on GaMnAs as a prototype III-Mn-V system. Spectrally-resolved and time-resolved experimental configurations are described, including the use of zero-background autocorrelation techniques for pulse optimization. The etching process used to prepare GaMnAs samples for four-wave mixing experiments is also highlighted. The high temporal resolution of this technique, afforded by the use of short (20 fsec) optical pulses, permits the rapid spin-flip scattering process in this system to be studied directly in the time domain, providing new insight into the strong exchange coupling responsible for carrier-mediated ferromagnetism. We also show that spectral resolution of the four-wave mixing signal allows one to extract clear signatures of (s,p)-d hybridization in this system, unlike linear spectroscopy techniques. This increased sensitivity is due to the nonlinearity of the technique, which suppresses defect-related contributions to the optical response. This method may be used to measure the time scale for coherence decay (tied to the fastest scattering processes) in a wide variety of semiconductor systems of interest for next generation electronics and optoelectronics.