Time resolved magneto-optical studies of ferromagnetic InMnSb films

We report time resolved magneto-optical measurements in InMnSb ferromagnetic films with 2% and 2.8% Mn contents grown by low temperature molecular beam epitaxy. In order to probe a possible interaction between the spins of photoexcited carriers and the Mn ions, we measured spin dynamics before and after aligning the Mn ions by applying an external magnetic field at temperatures above and below the samples' Curie temperatures. We observed no significant temperature or magnetic field dependence in the relaxation times and attribute the observed dynamics entirely to the relaxation of photoexcited electrons in the conduction band where the s-d coupling with the localized Mn ions is significantly weaker compared to the p-d exchange coupling. We observed several differences in the optical response of our InMnSb samples which could have been influenced mainly by the samples' growth conditions. (c) 2008 American Institute of Physics.