We report on the design, fabrication, and characterization of an all-dielectric one-dimensional (1D) resonant device formed by a silicon nitride grating impregnated by a low-index magneto-optical silica-type matrix. This impregnation is realized through the dipping of the 966 nm periodic template in a sol−gel solution previously doped with CoFe 2 O 4 nanoparticles, and able to fill the grating slits. By a proper adjustment of the geometrical parameters of such a photonic crystal membrane, simultaneous excitation of transverse electric (TE) and transverse magnetic (TM) polarization resonances is nearly achieved at 1570 nm. This TE/TM phase-matching situation leads to a fivefold enhancement of the Faraday effect in the resonance area with an increased merit factor of 0.32°. Moreover, the device demonstrates its ability to enhance longitudinal and transverse Kerr effects for the other directions of the applied magnetic field. Taking benefits from the ability of the nanocomposite material to be processed on photonic platforms, and despite its quite low magneto-optical activity compared to classical magnetic materials, this work proves that an alldielectric 1D device can produce a high magneto-optical sensitivity to every magnetic field directions.

Using the emission of the positively charged exciton as a probe, we analyze the dynamics of the optical pumping and the dynamics of the relaxation of a Mn spin exchange coupled with a confined hole spin in a II-VI semiconductor quantum dot. The hole-Mn spin can be efficiently initialized in a few tens of ns under optical injection of spin-polarized carriers. We show that this optical pumping process and its dynamics are controlled by electron-Mn flip-flops within the positively charged exciton-Mn complex. The pumping mechanism and its magnetic field dependence are theoretically described by a model including the dynamics of the electron-Mn complex in the excited state and the dynamics of the hole-Mn complex in the ground state of the positively charged quantum dot. We measure at zero magnetic field a spin-relaxation time of the hole-Mn spin in the μs range or shorter. This hole-Mn spin relaxation is induced by the presence of valence-band mixing in self-assembled quantum dots.