In-plane optical anisotropy of parabolic and half-parabolic Cd1−xMnxTe quantum wells

We report an investigation of the in-plane anisotropy of parabolic (PQW) and half-parabolic (HPQW) Cd1−xMnxTe quantum wells (QWs) grown by molecular beam epitaxy on (001) oriented GaAs substrates. For HPQW we obtain a good description using a microscopic model related to the atomic structure of interfaces. For PQW a strong anisotropy of excitonic reflectivity (not predicted by the model) is also observed. This result suggests that extrinsic contributions must be considered in realistic analysis of in-plane anisotropy of semiconductor quantum structures.