Local Electronic Properties and Magnetism of (Cd,Mn)Te Quantum Wells

The electronic properties of heterostructures containing (Cd,Mn)Te quantum wells are probed by soft x-ray spectroscopies. We provide experimental evidence that Mn ions are in the Mn2+ (3d5) electronic configuration, and rule out the possibility that charge transfer and crystal field effects can reduce the magnetic moment of each Mn ion to the value (0.61) extracted from the fitting of the magnetization curve with a Brillouin function. These results confirm that the observed magnetic behavior can be correctly explained by assuming an antiferromagnetic coupling between nearest-neighbor S = 5/2 Mn2+ ions, rather than a paramagnetic response from an ensemble of low-spin Mn ions