The purpose of this collective book is to present a non-exhaustive survey of spinrelated
phenomena in semiconductors with a focus on recent research. In some sense
it may be regarded as an updated version of the Optical Orientation book, which was
entirely devoted to spin physics in bulk semiconductors.
During the 24 years that have elapsed, we have witnessed, on the one hand, an
extraordinary development in the wonderful semiconductor physics in two dimensions
with the accompanying revolutionary applications. On the other hand, during
the last maybe 15 years there was a strong revival in the interest in spin phenomena,
in particular in low-dimensional semiconductor structures. While in the 1970s
and 1980s the entire world population of researchers in the field never exceeded 20
persons, now it can be counted by the hundreds and the number of publications by
the thousands. This explosive growth is stimulated, to a large extent, by the hopes
that the electron and/or nuclear spins in a semiconductor will help to accomplish the
dream of factorizing large numbers by quantum computing and eventually to develop
a new spin-based electronics, or “spintronics”. Whether any of this will happen or
not, still remains to be seen. Anyway, these ideas have resulted in a large body of
interesting and exciting research, which is a good thing by itself.