Single Particle and Collective Spin Excitations in Semimagnetic Quantum Wells

Collective and single-particle spin-flip excitations of a two-dimensional electron gas in a semimagnetic Cd1−xMnxTe quantum well are observed by resonant Raman scattering. Application of a magnetic field splits the spin-subbands and a spin-polarization is induced in the electron gas. Above some critical field, a collective spin-flip mode, which disperses with in-plane wave vector, dominates the spectra. The energy of this mode is given by the bare Zeeman energy at vanishing wave vector as predicted by Larmor’s theorem and its in-plane dispersion is well described by a model of the interacting polarizability of a spin polarized electron gas when both exchange and correlation are taken into account.