Study of injection of spin - polarized electrons into semiconductors through ferromagnetic metal

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We investigated mainly the following four topics to create new nonlinear optical functional devices based on the pitchfork bifurcation bistable operation of vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) and injection of spin-polarized electrons.(1) We studied the bistable switching between the two orthogonal polarization mode existing in the VCSEL with a squared shape waveguide. The relative magnitude of self- and cross-saturation coefficients are crucial to determine the characteristics of polarization switching of laser diodes. The numerical calculation confirmed that the relation between self- and cross saturation coefficients satisfies the condition for polarization bistability in both balk and quantum well active layers. The bistable conduction is satisfied in the wider region for a compressively strained quantum well, especially in the region with large linear gains.(2) All-optical signal processing, such as demultiplexing with a signal bit width conversion function and the conversion between RZ and NRZ formats, were experimentally demonstrated using a polarization bistable VCSEL. We have shown by our simulations that the 3R function (Retiming, Reshaping, and Regenerating) can be obtained using a such VCSEL.(3) We estimated the spin relaxation time of the electrons drifting through the p-n junction from the time- and polarization- resolved photoluminescence. The result showed that the polarization fairly maintained during the drift.(4) We fabricated the light emitting diode (LED) with an n-side electrode made of ferromagnetic metal, CoCr. However, the light output from LED was unpolarized. This result points out that the polarized electrons may be de-polarized at the interface between GaAs and CoCr.