Abstract

Magneto-electronics, as a field of research comprises two distinct avenues – metal spintronics and semiconductor spintronics. Spin injection experiments from ferromagnetic transition metals and alloys into GaAs and InGaAs quantum wells represent a nice fusion of the two areas. In this talk, the non-equilibrium character of spin states injected into quantum wells and bulk semiconductors will be explored up to room temperature. The optical detection method described here is based on the Hanle effect and this dynamical phenomenon is described by a variation of the Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert equation. In metals, equilibrium electron spin configurations are computed and measured and their description relies on the same dynamics in the presence of the exchange interaction. Competition between exchange energy and anisotropy energy in metals gives rise to magnetic domains, and the manipulation and detection of these objects by magnetic field and electric current has recently become an subject of furious study.