Spin-induced optical second harmonic generation in the centrosymmetric magnetic semiconductors EuTe and EuSe

Phys Rev Lett. 2009 Jul 31;103(5):057203. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.103.057203. Epub 2009 Jul 30.

Abstract

Spectroscopy of the centrosymmetric magnetic semiconductors EuTe and EuSe reveals spin-induced optical second harmonic generation (SHG) in the band gap vicinity at 2.1-2.4 eV. The magnetic field and temperature dependence demonstrates that the SHG arises from the bulk of the materials due to a novel type of nonlinear optical susceptibility caused by the magnetic dipole contribution combined with spontaneous or induced magnetization. This spin-induced susceptibility opens access to a wide class of centrosymmetric systems by harmonics generation spectroscopy.