Abstract

Recently, large photoinduced changes of the polarization state of a beam that exploit the ability of semimagnetic semiconductors to easily rotate the polarization state of a linearly polarized beam in the presence of a static magnetic field in the Faraday configuration were demonstrated,¹ These photoinduced changes amount to approximately 10% of the corresponding linear Faraday rotation in CdMn_xTe_1−x; the latter can be very large, several thousands of degrees for frequencies dose to the exeitonic resonance or the band gap.²

© 1993 Optical Society of America