Inversion asymmetry and hole magnetooptics in zinc-blende semiconductors

We present a study of magnetooptical absorption by holes in zinc-blende semiconductors. We focus on transitions which, in the absence of the parity-violating Kane term in the Hamiltonian, are electric-dipole forbidden. These become allowed by virtue of mixing of states of different parity by the linear-k contribution to the effective Hamiltonian. The intensity of the resulting absorption is proportional to the square of the strength C of the Kane term. In addition to the electric-dipole transitions there are electric-quadrupole and magnetic-dipole transitions. Under certain conditions, in the Voigt geometrical arrangements, the matrix elements of the electric-dipole, the electric-quadrupole, and the magnetic-dipole moments give contributions to particular excitations and interference may result. The inversion-asymmetry contribution changes sign as the external magnetic field B₀ is reversed while the electric-quadrupole and magnetic-dipole matrix elements change sign upon reversal of the incident photon momentum q. Thus, the interference may be made constructive or destructive by reversal of either B₀ or q. We propose magnetooptical experiments which would allow the determination of both the magnitude and sign of C by measuring the change in the magnetooptic absorption upon reversal of B₀. We give criteria for the existence of the interference and discuss application to InSb, GaSb, and HgTe.