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We have carried out mid-infrared magneto-optical studies of Ga1−x Mn x As films grown using two different techniques: low temperature molecular beam epitaxy (LT-MBE) and a combination of ion-implantation and pulsed laser melting (II-PLM). The second method is a high temperature growth technique which minimizes the formation of Mn interstitials. Both samples exhibit a ferromagnetic response with similar Curie temperatures (T C). The samples show qualitatively similar behavior in below bandgap Faraday and Kerr measurements, which probe the valence band structure of the materials. This suggests that the same mid-infrared transitions are dominating the magneto-optical response of both samples.

Magnetotransport properties of ferromagnetic GaAs / Mn digital alloys have been investigated in fields up to 33 T. A series of four GaAs / Mn digital alloys with different Mn coverages (0.15 ML - 0.5 ML) at fixed GaAs spacer thickness (9 ML), with Curie temperatures, TC, between 20 and 40 K shows hopping conduction behavior in the zero-field sheet resistance below TC. Analysis of the high field magnetotransport measurements on these samples reveals hole densities between 0.45×1013 and 1.8×1013 cm -2/ Mn layer at 5 K. In contrast, a GaAs / Mn digital alloy with slightly different parameters (0.5 ML Mn and 14 ML GaAs spacer layers) and growth conditions shows essentially metallic behavior and much higher TC (60 K). The zero-field sheet resistance, although decreasing weakly with T at low temperatures, cannot be fit by a hopping expression. From analysis of Shubnikov-de Haas oscillations observed in this sample, an effective mass of ≈0.31m0 was determined, close to the heavy hole mass of GaAs . The hole density extracted from fits to RHall at high fields is comparable to that of the insulating GaAs / Ma digital alloys at the same Mn coverage. This suggests that the increased metallicity is the most important factor in significantly enhancing TC.

We have investigated the magnetic and magneto-transport properties of a systematic sequence of five InAs/Mn digital alloys grown by a combination of molecular beam epitaxy and atomic layer epitaxy. The samples consist of 30 periods of Mn fractional monolayers (ML) (0.17– 0.5 ML ) separated by 14 ML thick InAs spacer layers in a superlattice configuration. Four samples show n-type electrical conduction while the fifth (0.25 ML Mn ) is p-type. Squid magnetization measurements performed on these samples show remnant magnetization above room temperature, which is apparently related to a second phase.

Protein biological function depends on structural flexibility and change. From cellular communication through membrane ion channels to oxygen uptake and delivery by haemoglobin, structural changes are critical. It has been suggested that vibrations that extend through the protein play a crucial role in controlling these structural changes. While nature may utilize such long-range vibrations for optimization of biological processes, bench-top characterization of these extended structural motions for engineered biochemistry has been elusive. Here we show the first optical observation of long-range protein vibrational modes. This is achieved by orientation-sensitive terahertz near-field microscopy measurements of chicken egg white lysozyme single crystals. Underdamped modes are found to exist for frequencies10 cm(-1). The existence of these persisting motions indicates that damping and intermode coupling are weaker than previously assumed. The methodology developed permits protein engineering based on dynamical network optimization.

We employ Faraday and Kerr effect spectroscopy in the infrared range to investigate the electronic structure of ${\mathrm{Ga}}_{1\ensuremath{-}x}{\mathrm{Mn}}_{x}\mathrm{As}$ near the Fermi energy. The band structure of this archetypical dilute-moment ferromagnetic semiconductor has been a matter of controversy, fueled partly by previous measurements of the unpolarized infrared absorption and their phenomenological impurity-band interpretation. Unlike the unpolarized absorption, the infrared magneto-optical effects we study are intimately related to ferromagnetism, and their interpretation is much more microscopically constrained in terms of the orbital character of the relevant band states. We show that the conventional theory of the disordered valence band with an antiferromatnetic exchange term accounts semiquantitatively for the overall characteristics of the measured infrared magneto-optical spectra.

Magnetotransport properties of ferromagnetic GaAs/Mn digital alloys have been investigated in fields up to 33 T. A series of four GaAs/Mn digital alloys with different Mn coverages (0.15 ML - 0.5 ML) at fixed GaAs spacer thickness (9 ML), with Curie temperatures, TC, between 20 and 40 K shows hopping conduction behavior in the zero-field sheet resistance below TC. Analysis of the high field magnetotransport measurements on these samples reveals hole densities between 0.45×1013 and 1.8×1013cm-2/Mn layer at 5 K. In contrast, a GaAs/Mn digital alloy with slightly different parameters (0.5 ML Mn and 14 ML GaAs spacer layers) and growth conditions shows essentially metallic behavior and much higher TC (60 K). The zero-field sheet resistance, although decreasing weakly with T at low temperatures, cannot be fit by a hopping expression. From analysis of Shubnikov-de Haas oscillations observed in this sample, an effective mass of ≈0.31m0 was determined, close to the heavy hole mass of GaAs. The hole density extracted from fits to RHall at high fields is comparable to that of the insulating GaAs/Ma digital alloys at the same Mn coverage. This suggests that the increased metallicity is the most important factor in significantly enhancing TC.