Manipulating spin and charge in magnetic semiconductors using superconducting vortices

The continuous need for miniaturization and increase in device speed1 drives the electronics industry to explore new avenues of information processing. One possibility is to use electron spin to store, manipulate and carry information2. All such ‘spintronics’ applications are faced with formidable challenges in finding fast and efficient ways to create, transport, detect, control and manipulate spin textures and currents. Here we show how most of these operations can be performed in a relatively simple manner in a hybrid system consisting of a superconducting film and a paramagnetic diluted magnetic semiconductor (DMS) quantum well. Our proposal is based on the observation that the inhomogeneous magnetic fields of the superconducting film create local spin and charge textures in the DMS quantum well, leading to a variety of effects such as Bloch oscillations and an unusual quantum Hall effect. We exploit recent progress in manipulating magnetic flux bundles (vortices) in superconductors3,4 and show how these can create, manipulate and control the spin textures in DMSs.