Proposal of a spintronics-based polarization detector

Abstract

Connection between spin orientation in semiconductors and optical selection rules has been exploited in spin LEDs (Fiederling et al., 1999), where the degree of luminescence polarization indicates the average spin of electrons injected into the diode. We present a proposal of a reciprocal device: a spin-based detector of circularly polarized light, in which the absorption occurs in the planar semiconductor (SC) structure