Spin-dependent resonant tunneling through semimetallic ErAs quantum wells in a magnetic field

Resonant tunneling through semimetallic ErAs quantum wells embedded in GaAs structures with AlAs barriers was recently found to exhibit an intriguing behavior in magnetic fields: a peak splitting occurred only in fields perpendicular to the film while a second resonant channel opened for in-plane fields. The behavior is explained in terms of the valence-band states in ErAs in the vicinity of the Γ point, their exchange splitting induced by the localized Er 4f magnetic moments, and by a selection rule involving the total angular momentum component along the normal to the interface. © 1996 The American Physical Society.